AMERICAN  LITERATURE 


1607-1885 


BY 


CHARLES    F.  RICHARDSON 


COMPLETE   IN   TWO  VOLUMES 


VOL.   II. 

AMERICAN  POETRY  AND  FICTION 

N 

Ills  JITYjl 


NEW  YORK  &  LONDON 

G.    P.    PUTNAM'S    SONS 


1889 


COPYRIGHT   BY 

CHARLES  F.  RICHARDSON 

1888 


Press  of 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 
NEW  YORK 


CONTENTS. 


CHArTER  I. 
EARLY  VERSE  MAKING  IN  AMERICA,       .  .  i 

CHAPTER  II. 
THE  DAWN  OF  IMAGINATION,  ...  -23 

CHAPTER  III. 
HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW,          .  -       5( 

CHAPTER   IV. 
EDGAR  ALLAN  POE,  .  ....       97 

CHAPTER  V. 
EMERSON  AS  POET,  ....  .  137 

CHAPTER  VI. 
POETS  OF  FREEDOM  AND  CULTURE  :  WHITTIER,  LOWELL 

AND  HOLMES, .172 

CHAPTER  VII. 
TONES  AND  TENDENCIES  OF  AMERICAN  VERSE,       .         .219 

CHAPTER  VIII. 
THE  BELATED  BEGINNING  OF  FICTION,    ....     282 

CHAPTER  IX. 
JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER,        .  .  .     297 

CHAPTER  X. 
NATHANIEL   HAWTHORNE, 330 

CHAPTER   XL 
THE  LESSER  NOVELISTS, 390 

CHAPTER  XII. 

LATER  MOVEMENTS  IN  AMERICAN  FICTION,     .         .        .     413 
INDEX,     .         .         .        .         .        .        .        .        .        .451 


"•*•"• 

CHAPTER  I. 

\%// 


EARLY  VERSE-MAKING  IN  AMERICA. 

POETRY  is  the  rhythmical  expression  of  beauty 
or  imagination,  the  verbal  utterance  of  the  ideal, 
and  therefore  the  highest  and  most  permanent 
form  of  literature. 

According  to  this  definition,  it  is  easy  to  see 
that  very  little  poetry  was  produced  in  America 
before  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Much 
of  the  early  verse  of  the  colonies  and  states  was 
unrhythmical,  and  most  of  it  was  neither  beauti 
ful  nor  imaginative.  The  human  soul  was  here, 
and  the  glory  of  nature  ;  but  genius  was  smoth 
ered  or  non-existent,  and  poetic  art  was  almost 
wholly  lacking.  Puritan  theology  in  New  Eng 
land  could  no  more  produce  poetry  than  it  could 
paint  a  Sistine  Madonna.  Its  theological  force 
was  intense,  but  it  was  neither  gracious  nor 
serene.  Something  more  than  intensity  is  needed 
in  the  production  of  a  true  poem.  Puritanism 
could  preach,  write  diaries  and  descriptions,  and 
make  an  occasional  eloquent  speech  for  liberty  ; 
but  of  the  poetic  art  it  had  not  an  idea.  It 
believed  that  saints  were  born,  not  made  ;  but  its 
poets  were  neither  born  nor  made.  The  broad, 
thorough  culture  of  John  Milton,  who  could 
apprehend  Dante  and  Shakespeare,  as  well  as 


2  American  Literature. 

;.-.§  Mosf.s  and; Paul,  was  impossible  in  early  Massa- 

'*  cliusetts.'  ''Even  an  Andrew  Marvell  was  not    to 

l^/be/expectecJ'.there.     The   soul  was  a  part  of  the 

scheme  of  redemption,  not  a  spontaneous  singer 

of  the  beautiful.     Nature,  whether  august  on  the 

sea-coast  or  fragrant  by  the  brook-side,  was  of  a 

lost  world  ;  and  the  Puritan  had  no  idea  that  any 

earthly  beauty  could  be  its  own  excuse  for  being. 

In  the  middle  and  southern  colonies  the  state 
of  things  was  no  better.     I  suppose  I  shall  hardly 
be  required  to    demonstrate    the    statement   that 
poetry  was  not  to  be  expected  from  the  brains  or 
hands  of  the  Dutchmen  of  New  Amsterdam.     The 
Pennsylvania  Friends  were  as  estimable  and  hon 
est  as  they  are  now ;  but  then,  as  now,  they  were 
unliterary.     The  various    representatives    of  non- 
English    nations,  in  the  middle  colonies,    neither 
transplanted  their  own  literatures    nor  aided  the 
English.       The    Roman   Catholics    of    Maryland 
were  not  a  book-making  folk  ;    and  the  cavaliers 
of  Virginia  left  behind  them  the  lyrical  power  of 
the  aristocratic  songsters  of  England  in  the  seven 
teenth    century.       The    poetic     prospect     in    the 
Atlantic    colonies,   prior  to   1700,  was    more    dis 
couraging    than    it    is    in    Canada   to-day ;  and  it 
must   be   confessed   that    the    promise    of    better 
things  had  not  become  brilliant  even   as   late  as 
1800.     It  is  my  opinion  that   only  one   true   poem 
was  produced  in  America  before  the  latter  year  ; 
and  I  am  sure  that  no  one   could   select  a  dozen 
pieces,  of  all  the  verse  then  in  existence,  deserv 
ing  the  name  of   poem,    under   the   most   liberal 
definition. 


Early   Verse-Making  in  America.  3 

There  is  a  bibliographical  curiosity  much  prized 
by  collectors  of  Americana,  and  well  known  to 
antiquarians,  called  "  The  Bay  Psalm 
Book."  This  famous  volume,  which  PsahnBoo£ 
appeared  in  1640,  was  the  first  printed 
book  produced  within  the  present  limits  of  the 
United  States.  It  consists  of  a  (so-called)  metri 
cal  version  of  the  Psalms,  translated  directly  from 
Hebrew  into  English  by  several  ministers  of 
Massachusetts  Bay.  One  hesitates  to  declare 
definitely  that  this  is  the  worst  book  of  verse  ever 
produced  in  America,  for  the  candidates  for  the 
lowest  place  are  many,  and  I  can  recall  at  least 
one  "poem  "  produced  in  our  own  day,  the  author 
of  which  proceeded  on  the  theory  that  blank 
verse  consists  simply  of  ten  prose  syllables,  begin 
ning  with  a  capital  letter.  But  the  "  Bay  Psalm 
Book"  is  so  wretched  a  collection  of  pious 
doggerel  that,  on  the  whole,  the  philosophic 
reader  rejoices  at  its  badness.  American  verse 
had  made  a  beginning,  and  was  sure  to  rise,  for 
the  adequate  reason  that  it  could  not  sink  any 
lower.  In  comparison  with  the  "  Bay  Psalm 
Book  "  that  dullest  of  Middle-English  poems,  the 
"  Ormulum,"  is  a  masterpiece  of  genius  and  a 
model  of  metrical  skill.  When  we  consider  that 
these  translators  of  the  Psalms  might  have  availed 
themselves  of  the  noble  versions  in  the  Wycliffe, 
Bishops',  and  King  James  Bibles,  but  pre 
ferred  to  spoil  everything  for  the  sake  of  wretched 
rhymes  or  lines  quite  defying  scansion,  we  are 
tempted  to  a  severity  that  is  mitigated  by  the 


4  American  Literature. 

reflection  that  poetry  is  still  confused  with  sing 
song  in  many  excellent  minds ;  and  that  the 
worst  metrical  hymn  is  sometimes  deemed  more 
devout  than  the  best  chant  of  rhythmical  prose. 

Notwithstanding  the  wealth  of  poetry  then 
existent  in  England,  the  Puritans  had  no  notion 
of  the  difference  between  good  verse  and  bad. 
Productions  whose  poverty  of  thought  and  naked 
ness  of  form  were  nothing  less  than  pitiful,  they 
accepted  with  gratitude  and  hailed  with  extrav 
agant  enthusiasm.  One  writer  produced  a 
"poem,"  and  another,  perhaps  in  verse,  greeted 
that  poem  with  loud  acclaim  ;  but  both  the 
praiser  and  the  praised  have  long  since  been 
shrouded  in  the  obscurity  from  which,  indeed, 
they  never  emerged  save  in  the  provincial  esti 
mate.  Not  until  the  poets  of  the  "  Dunciad  "  are 
revered  as  masters  need  the  literary  historian 
analyze  the  achievements  or  record  the  names  of 
New  England's  clerical  bards  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  Let  us  give  them  the  credit  of  gal 
lantry,  however,  for  they  politely  found  their 
Tenth  Muse  in  Anne  Bradstreet,  the  first  woman 
in  America  who  entered  the  ranks  of  authorship, 
and  the  first  person  who  put  forth  a  volume  of 
verse  in  that  part  of  the  country  from 

Anne  (Dudley) 

Bradstreet,        which  the    best  American  poetry  was 

l6l2-l672.  r     \  it  T» 

to  spring.  The  merit  of  Mrs.  Brad- 
street's  poems  is  rather  negative  than  positive  ; 
they  are  not  so  bad  as  they  might  have  been,  and 
occasionally  proffer  a  good  thought  or  a  decent 
line.  It  would  be  possible,  it  seems  to  me,  for 


Early   Verse-Making  in  America.  5 

some  other  person  than  a  literary  historian,  or 
a  proof-reader,  to  read  her  "  works,"  especially 
when  adorned  by  the  fair  type  and  broad  margins 
of  the  excellent  modern  reprint.*  To  be  sure, 
when  wandering  through  her  elegiac  verse,  the 
reader  will  exclaim,  with  Southey,  "  my  days 
among  the  dead  are  passed,"  though  he  can 
hardly  add  that  these  dead  are  "the  mighty  minds 
of  old."  His  courage  will  flag  long  before  the 
end  of  the  ponderous  poems  devoted  respectively 
to  "The  Four  Elements"  and  "The  Four  Mon 
archies,"  and  at  last  he  will  think  affectionately  of 
the  colophon  of  some  ancient  volumes  :  "  Explicit 
Liber:  Laus  Deo/'  But  Mrs.  Bradstreet,  though 
not  a  poet,  possessed  a  thoughtful  mind,  which 
she  developed  to  the  best  of  her  meagre  opportu 
nities  ;  and  some  of  her  miscellaneous  reflections 
in  prose,  entitled  "  Meditations,  Divine  and 
Moral,"  are  of  decided  merit,  easily  surpassing  the 
most  ambitious  of  her  labored  productions  in 
verse. 

"The  Day  of  Doom,"  by  the  Reverend  Michael 
Wigglesworth,  far  surpassed  in  popularity  the 
much-praised  productions  of  the  Tenth  Muse.  A 
good  motto  for  the  poem  would  have 

Michael 

been    these    two  lines    from   a    hymn    Wigglesworth, 

1  1631-1715. 

once  sung  in  the  churches  : 

"  My  thoughts  on  awful  subjects  roll, 
Damnation  and  the  dead." 

"  The   Day  of   Doom  "  was  an  attempt  to  apply 

*  Edited  by  John  Harvard  Ellis;  Charlestown,  Mass.,  1867. 


6  American  Literature. 

the  principles  of  extreme  seventeenth-century  Cal 
vinism  to  the  final  adjustment  of  the  unseen  and 
unknowable,  and  incidentally  to  produce  a  poem. 
This  attempt  was  not,  in  my  view,  entirely  suc 
cessful  ;  but  a  different  opinion  was  held  by  the 
many  readers  who  thumbed  its  pages  for  a  hun 
dred  years.  They  were  sure  it  was  true,  and  so 
they  bought  and  prized  it,  in  edition  after  edition, 
at  a  time  when  the  vaporings  of  <l  A  Midsummer 
Night's  Dream  "  or  the  semi-pagan  moral  virtues 
of  "The  Faerie  Queene"  were  unknown  in  Mas 
sachusetts,  even  by  title.*  Cotton  Mather  said 
that  it  had  often  been  reprinted  in  Old  England 
and  New,  and  might  perhaps  instruct  children 
"till  the  Day  itself  arrive."  The  work  is  abso 
lutely  devoid  of  merit,  save  in  its  evident  sin 
cerity.  At  great  length,  and  with  the  most  delib 
erate  argumentation,  it  teaches  the  horrible  doc 
trine  of  the  damnation  of  non-elect  infants  be 
cause  of  the  sin  of  Adam  as  federal  head.  Jona 
than  Edwards'  famous  spider  sermon,  with  all  its 
mixture  of  brimstone  and  blood,  was  at  least  more 
tolerable  than  this,  for  it  treated  (presumably)  of 
adults,  and  made  no  pretension  to  be  a  poem. 
"The  Day  of  Doom,"  like  "The  Bay  Psalm 

"  Before  1700  there  was  not  in  Massachusetts,  so  far  as  is  known,  a 
copy  of  Shakespeare's  or  of  Milton's  poems;  and  as  late  as  1723,  whatever 
may  have  been  in  private  hands,  Harvard  College  library  lacked  Adclison, 
Atterbury,  Bolingbroke,  Dryden,  Gay,  Locke,  Pope,  Prior,  Steele,  Swift, 

and  Young Shakespeare  was  not  reprinted  in  New  England  until 

1802-1804,  nor  do  I  find  Milton  until  1796,  though  it  was  found  twenty 
years  earlier  in  Philadelphia."—  Mellen  Chamberlain,  librarian  of  the 
Boston  Public  Library ;  address  at  the  dedication  of  the  Brooks  Library, 
Brattleborough,  Vt.,  Jan.  25,  1887. 


Early   Verse-Making  in  America.  7 

Book "  and  Mrs.  Bradstreet's  volume,  is  not  a 
piece  of  literature  ;  the  student  notes  it  only  as  a 
curiosity,  and  as  a  pitiful  indication  of  the  literary 
poverty  of  the  days  and  the  land  in  which  it  was 
popular.  Its  most  famous  line,  in  which  Wiggles- 
worth  metamorphoses  the  child-loving  and  child- 
blessing  Christ  into  one  who  assigns  lost  infants 
to  "  the  easiest  room  in  Hell,"  occurs  in  a  poem  of 
which  one  part  is  as  bad  as  another,  from  the 
literary  stand-point,  though  perhaps  not  as  repug 
nant  to  the  moral  sense  as  this  celebrated  example 
of  the  author's  modesty  and  charity.  The  chil 
dren  say,  in  the  course  of  their  appeal  for  mercy  : 

O  great  Creator,  why  was  our  Nature 

depraved  and  forlorn  ? 
Why  so  defiFd,  and  made  so  vil'd 

whilst  we  were  yet  unborn  ? 
If  it  be  just,  and  needs  we  must 

transgressors  reck'ned  be, 
Thy  Mercy  Lord,  to  us  afford, 

which  sinners  hath  set  free. 

But  the  judge  elaborately  refutes  them,  with  such 
arguments  as  these  : 

Would  you  have  griev'd  to  have  receiv'd 

through  Adam  so  much  good, 
As  had  been  your  for  evermore, 

if  he  at  first  had  stood  ? 
Would  you  have  said,  we  ne'r  obey'd, 

nor  did  thy  Laws  regard ; 
It  ill  befits  with  benefits 

us,  Lord,  so  to  reward. 

Since  then  to  share  in  his  welfare 
you  could  have  been  content, 


8  American  Literature. 

You  may  with  reason  share  in  his  treason, 

and  in  the  punishment. 
Hence  you  were  born  in  state  forlorn, 

with  Natures  so  depraved  : 
Death  was  your  due,  because  that  you 

had  thus  yourselves  behaved.* 

And  this  was  the  favorite  poem  of  that  New 
England  which  was  to  produce  an  Emerson,  a 
Longfellow,  and  a  Poe, — a  poem  written  during 
the  lifetime  of  Milton  and  Dryden,  and  locally 
overshadowing  the  fame  of  the  best  of  their  pro 
ductions. 

In  the  pre-revolutionary  procession  of  New 
England  bards,  half  forgotten  and  all  unread, 
there  are  some  picturesque  figures,  standing  forth 
because  of  personal  rather  than  poetical  qualities, 
and  therefore  unmentioned  here ;  though  Mrs. 
Bradstreet's  clerical  companions  on  the  Massachu 
setts  Parnassus  were  for  the  most  part  an  indis 
tinguishable  group,  without  salient  characteristics 
or  individual  merits.  It  is  not  strange,  perhaps, 
that  Mrs.  Bradstreet  herself  keeps  a  little  larger 
place  in  our  minds  because  she  was  the  earliest  of 
our  professional  poets,  and  the  earliest  American 
woman  who  won  any  literary  renown.  Yet  more 
conspicuous  in  quaint  loneliness  was  that  poor 
negro  girl,  Phillis  Wheatley,  whose  clever  verses, 
neatly  turned  according  to  the  prevalent  English 
fashion,  pleased  the  Bostonians  during 
the  latter  half  °f  tne  eighteenth  century. 
Born  in  Africa,  Phillis  was  a  precocious 
household  pet,  in  the  last  days  of  African  slavery 

*  I  quote  from  an  edition  published  in  Boston  as  late  as  1828. 


Early   Verse- Ma  king  in  America.  9 

in  New  England.  Her  little  booklet  of  "  Poems 
on  Various  Subjects,  Religious  and  Moral,"  was 
published  in  London  in  1773,  and  has  several 
times  been  reprinted, — as  poetry,  as  a  curiosity, 
or  as  an  abolition  argument.  There  seems  no 
reason  to  doubt  the  genuineness  of  the  poems,  as 
compositions  of  the  girl  herself ;  the  early  edi 
tions  contained  attestations  signed  by  eighteen 
aristocratic  Bostonians,  to  the  fact  that  they 
"  were  written  by  Phillis,  a  young  negro  girl,  who 
was  but  a  few  years  since,  brought  an  unculti 
vated  Barbarian  from  Africa,  and  has  ever  since 
been,  and  now  is,  under  the  disadvantage  of  serv 
ing  as  a  Slave  in  a  family  in  this  town."  Some.of 
the  poems  are  of  decided  excellence  ;  good  lines 
of  the  prevalent  "  classic  "  style,  are  not  hard  to 
find ;  the  general  merit  of  the  collection  easily 
surpasses  that  of  Mrs.  Bradstreet's  ;  and  when 
we  make  allowance  for  its  artificiality,  we  may 
readily  admit  that  it  equals  the  average  first 
volume  of  poems  to-day — written,  like  these,  "for 
the  amusement  of  the  author,"  who  of  course 
"had  no  intention  ever  to  have  \_szc\  published 
them."  The  book  remains  the  principal  literary 
achievement  of  the  colored  race  in  America. 

Toward  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century  the 
storm-centre  of  American  poetry  seemed  to  move 
southward,  hovering  for  a  time  over  Yale  College 
and  Connecticut.  Timothy  Dwight,  grandson  of 
Jonathan  Edwards,  and  president  of  Yale 

11-11  r        i          Timothy 

from  1795  to  1817,  published  at  Hartford,      Dwight, 
in    1785,    "The   Conquest    of    Canaan,  a    I752~ 
Poem,    in    Eleven    Books."     The    author,   in    his 


io  American  Literature. 

Johnsonian  preface,  written  in  the  balanced  sen 
tences  then  in  vogue,  felicitates  himself  that  "  the 
poem  is  the  first  of  the  kind  which  has  been  pub 
lished  in  this  country";  and  not  unnaturally, 
therefore,  dedicates  it  "  To  his  Excellency,  George 
Washington,  Esquire,  Commander-in-chief  of  the 
American  Armies,  The  Saviour  of  his  Country, 
The  Supporter  of  Freedom,  and  the  Benefactor 
of  Mankind."  If  the  soldier  Washington  ever 
read  these  stories  of  the  wars  of  "  Canaan,"  he 
found  them  decorously  written  in  rhymed  iambic 
pentameters,  fashioned  strictly  in  accordance 
with  the  prevalent  English  style,  and  duly 
equipped  with  antitheses,  ''  hovering  accents,"  and 
all*  the  requisities  of  artificial-heroic  verse  : 

Behold  these  scenes  expanding  to  thy  soul ! 
From  orient  realms  what  blackening  armies  roll ! 
See  their  proud  Monarch,  in  yon  glimmering  car, 
Leads  his  strong  host,  and  points  the  waste  of  war. 
Till,  rais'd  by  Heaven,  the  youth,  whose  early  bloom 
Gives  a  fair  promise  of  his  worth  to  come, 
That  second  Irad,  Othniel,  lifts  his  hand, 
And  sweeps  the  heathens  from  his  wasted  land,  etc. 

There  were  304  pages  of  verse  like  this, 
"  including  9,672  lines,"  wrote  a  long-dead  hand 
on  the  last  page  of  the  copy  before  me.  Most 
could  raise  the  flowers  in  1785,  for  all  had  got  the 
seed.  Dr.  Dwight's  trig  little  epic,  in  its  strong 
leather  covers,  was  found  in  many  a  meagre  book 
case  in  the  early  days  of  the  republic.  If  its 
qualities  are  those  of  industry  and  occasional  stiff 
merit,  rather  than  genius,  and  if  it  is  no  longer 


Early   Verse-Making  in  America.  1 1 

read,  can  we  say  anything  better  of  the  verse  of 
the  great  Doctor  Johnson  himself?  This  poem, 
and  Dr.  Dwight's  historico-didactic  pastoral  called 
"  Greenfield  Hill,"  showed  that  Americans  were 
feebly  gaining  a  little  in  metrical  skill,  though 
originality  seemed  as  far  off  as  ever.  Dr.  Dwight, 
who  was  as  modest  as  he  was  learned,  fairly  meas 
ured  the  success  and  the  failure  of  himself  and  his 
fellows,  by  the  frank  motto  from  Pope,  on  the 
title-page  of  "The  Conquest  of  Canaan  :" 

"  Fired,  at  first  sight,  with  what  the  Muse  imparts, 
In  fearless  youth  we  tempt  the  height  of  arts." 

At  this  time  a  tendency  toward  the  selection  of 
American  themes  began  to  be  apparent  in  poetry. 
"Greenfield  Hill,"  despite  its  pretty  title,  and  its 
pleasant  suggestion  of  Sir  John  Denham,  showed 
no  more  than  moderate  ability  ;  but  its  subject 
and  scenes  were  at  least  taken  from  the  author's 
own  Connecticut  town.  A  great  poet  is  both 
national  and  universal  ;  we  had  no  great  poets, 
and  therefore  could  not  produce  poetry  of  catholic^ 
interest  or  value  ;  hence  it  was  better  for  our 
bards  to  try  to  be  natural  and  American  than  to 
be  artificial  and  European.  The  patriotic  jingles 
evoked  by  the  Revolution  were  of  course  par 
tially  spontaneous,  though  but  imperfectly  poetic. 
Trumbull's  "  McFingal,"  a  sort  of  transformed 
"  Hudibras,"  in  which  American  free 
dom  and  new-world  progress  took  the  J°hn  Trumbuii, 
place  of  Butler's  Toryism,  was  in  its 
way  a  promoter  of  the  spirit  of  the  Revolution, 


12 


American  Literature. 


and  was  largely  bought  and  read  by  the  colonists, 
who  were  beginning  to  get  reading-matter  which 
they  really  liked,  besides  that  which  they  felt  that 
they  ought  to  like.  Some  colonial  follies,  as  well 
as  Tory  bigotries,  were  wholesomely  chastised  in 
the  swiftly-moving,  slipshod  verse  of  "  McFingal." 
Not  even  the  combination  of  patriotism,  duty,  and 
beautiful  typography  could  give  popularity  to 
Joel  Barlow's  plumbean  epic,  "The  Columbiad," 
which  failed  as  disastrously  as  its  pre- 
i7Cl^8i2OW'  decessor>  "The  Vision  of  Columbus." 
Barlow  ascribed  its  failure  to  the  fact 
that  the  Federalists  controlled  literary  criticism, 
while  "  The  Columbiad  "  was  written  by  a  Demo 
crat  ;  but  Federalists  did  not  hesitate  to  read  and 
praise  his  widely-popular  and  still-read  mock- 
heroic,  "  Hasty-Pudding,"  despite  some  mildly  dis 
gusting  passages  which  give  more  offence  to  the 
readers  of  our  fastidious  age  than  they  did  to  our 
tough-brained  great-grandfathers.  On  the  whole, 
.  these  Yale  graduates  were  giving  more  help  to 
future  American  literature  by  their  semi-original 
excursions  to  Parnassus  than  had  all  the  colonial 
manufacturers  of  British  pentameters,  though 
turned  as  neatly  as  some  of  the  lines  in  such  a 
poem  as  the  weak  but  smoothly-written  "  Philo 
sophic  Solitude  "  (1747),  by  William  Livingston, 
another  Yale  man,  afterwards  governor  of  New 
Jersey,  Continental  Congressman,  and  member  of 
the  Constitutional  Convention. 

The    most    conspicuous    names    in    the     period 
under  discussion  are  those  of  Trumbull,    Barlow, 


Early    Verse- Ma  king  in  America.  13 

and  Freneau.  Trumbull's  "  McFingal  "  and  Bar 
low's  "  Hasty-Pudding  "  have  been  reprinted  in 
our  own  time,  and  may  be  said  to  have  an  occa 
sional  reader.  Of  the  early  American  verse  these 
are  the  best-known  examples.  (  Philip  Freneau  is 
talked  about,  but  is  not  read.  His 
name  is  known,  in  a  vague  way,  as  phil '^™^ 
that  of  "  the  poet  of  the  Revolution  "  ; 
and  those  unfamiliar  with  his  voluminous  verse 
are  ready  to  believe  that  he  was  a  patriot,  a  wit, 
and  a  successful  lyrist.  He  was  indeed  a  patriot, 
who  had  no  words  too  bitter  for  King  George  the 
Third  and  his  generals  and  ministers,  but  most  of 
all  for  the  American  Tories.  He  liked  the  New 
England  Puritans  little  better.  Freneau  wrote 
swiftly  and  carelessly  on  a  multitude  of  subjects, 
usually  without  producing  anything  very  witty, 
satirical,  or  lyrical.  In  his  time  his  patriotic  and 
humorous  poems  were  called  brilliant  ;  to  us  they 
seem  "  very  valueless  verses,"  to  borrow  the  epithet 
applied  confidently,  by  a  living  critic,  to  the  poet 
ical  work  of  a  famous  American  author  of  later 
years.  Freneau  must  have  known  the  difference 
between  his  good  work  and  his  doggerel  rhymes, 
hurriedly  written  and  instantly  printed  ;  but  his 
public  neither  knew  nor  cared  for  the  difference, 
in  those  troublous  times  of  political  struggle, 
Revolution,  and  nation-making.  Freneau,  besides 
his  political,  satirical,  and  descriptive  poems,  also 
essayed  rattling  social  verse,  in  which  he  was 
surpassed  by  some  of  his  contemporaries — for 
instance,  by  James  McClurg,  of  Virginia,  whose 


14  American  Literature. 

"  Belles  of  Williamsburg  "  celebrated  the  beauties 
of  the  aristocratic  little  capital  between  the  York 
and  the  James. 

The  average  excellence  of  Freneau's  verse  is 
small ;  but  occasionally  one  finds  a  line,  a  stanza, 
or  even  a  whole  poem  marked  by  imagination  or 
by  poetic  thought.  It  is  a  pleasure,  after  the 
dull  hymns  and  weak  imitations  produced  in 
America  during  the  first  century  and  a  half  of 
colonial  life,  to  come  upon  one  little  lyric,  if  no 
more,  like  Freneau's  "The  Wild  Honey-Suckle": 

Fair  flower,  that  dost  so  comely  grow, 

Hid  in  this  silent,  dull  retreat, 
Untouch'd  thy  honey'd  blossoms  blow, 

Unseen  thy  little  branches  greet : 
No  roving  foot  shall  find  thee  here, 
No  busy  hand  provoke  a  tear. 

By  Nature's  self  in  white  array'd. 

She  bade  thee  shun  the  vulgar  eye, 
And  planted  here  the  guardian  shade, 

And  sent  soft  waters  murmuring  by  ; 
Thus  quietly  thy  summer  goes, 
Thy  days  declining  to  repose. 

Smit  with  those  charms  that  must  decay, 

I  grieve  to  see  your  future  doom  ; 
They  died — nor  were  those  flowers  less  gay, 

The  flowers  that  did  in  Eden  bloom  ; 
Unpitying  frosts,  and  Autumn's  power 
Shall  leave  no  vestige  of  this  flower. 

From  morning  suns  and  evening  dews 

At  first  thy  little  being  came  : 
If  nothing  once,  you  nothing  lose, 

For  when  you  die  you  are  the  same ; 


Early   Verse-Making  in  America.  15 

The  space  between  is  but  an  hour, 
The  frail  duration  of  a  flower.* 

This  is  imperfect  and  irregular,  but  it  is  gen-/ 
uine.  Freneau's  masterpiece,  which  seems  to  me 
the  best  poem  written  in  America  before  1800,  is 
"The  House  of  Night,  a  Vision,"  in  one  hundred 
and  thirty-six  four-line  stanzas,  which  appeared 
in  his  1786  collection.  Its  occasional  «The  House 
faults  of  expression  and  versification  are 
manifest,  but  in  thought  and  execution,  notwith 
standing  the  influence  of  Gray,  it  is  surprisingly 
original  and  strong,  distinctly  anticipating  some 
of  the  methods  of  Coleridge,  Poe,  and  the  Eng 
lish  pre-Raphaelite  poets,  none  of  whom,  prob 
ably,  ever  read  a  line  of  it.  To  those  who  enjoy 
a  literary  "find,"  and  like  to  read  and  praise  a  bit 
of  bizarre  genius  unknown  to  the  multitude,  I 
confidently  commend  u  The  House  of  Night." 
In  it  Death  lies  dying  at  midnight  in  his  weird 
and  sombre  palace  ;  doctors  surround  him,  and  a 
young  man  whose  love  Death  has  killed,  forgiv 
ingly  ministers  to  him.  Then  Death,  having 
composed  his  own  epitaph,  most  woefully  per 
ishes  ;  there  follows  his  grim  burial  in  a  grave 
doubly  defended  against  the  Devil,  so  late  his 
trusty  friend.  The  poem  ends  by  pointing  us 
toward  a  righteous  earthly  life  and  an  unending 
immortality.  It  is  not  great,  and  not  always 
smooth  ;  but  its  lofty  plot  is  strongly  worded  in 

*"  Poems  Written  between  the  Years  1768  and  1794,  by  Philip  Freneau, 
of  New  Jersey.  Monmouth,  N.  J. :  Printed  at  the  Press  of  the  Author,  at 
Mount  Pleasant,  near  Middletown  Point;  MDCCXCV." 


1 6  American  Literature. 

sometimes  stately  verse.  I  know  not  why  Fre- 
neau,  in  the  1795  collection  of  his  poems,  threw 
away  all  but  twenty-one  stanzas,  which  he  printed 
under  the  title  of  "The  Vision  of  the  Night,  a 
Fragment."  Surely  none  of  his  American  prede 
cessors  or  contemporaries  had  thought  or  sung,  as 
did  Freneau  in  this  alliterative  and  assonant 
poem,  of 

"The  black  ship  travelling  through  the  noisy  gale," 

"  A  mournful  garden  of  autumnal  hue," 

"The  primrose  there,  the  violet  darkly  blue," 

"  The  poplar  tall,  the  lotos,  and  the  lime," 

"  the  scarlet  mantled  morn," 

"  a  grave  replete  with  ghosts  and  dreams," 

and 

"  The  ecstasy  of  woe  run  mad." 

None  but  a  poet  could  have  written  lines  like 
these : 

"  Trim  the  dull  tapers,  for  I  see  no  dawn  ;  " 

"  so  loud  and  sad  it  played 
"  As  though  all  musick  were  to  breathe  its  last." 

The  American  mind  produced  a  psalm-book  at 
the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century  ;  at  the 
close  of  the  eighteenth,  by  a  change  that  was 
gradual,  not  violent,  it  gave  some  promise  of 
bringing  forth  that  ''native  American  drama" 
which  has  never  risen  into  the  plane  of  true  litera- 
The  early  ture>  The  chronicles  of  the  stage  in  the 
dr?maCan  Unitec*  States  are  by  no  means  uninter 
esting,  but  they  concern  the  literary  stu 
dent  even  less  than  do  the  chronicles  of  the  Eng- 


Early   Verse-Making  in  America.  17 

lish  stage  for  the  corresponding  period.  The 
wild  or  magnanimous  Indian,  the  patriot  of  the 
Revolution,  the  society  belle,  the  fashionable  vil 
lain,  the  honest  back-woods  Yankee,  and  the  old- 
time  volunteer  fireman  of  New  York,  have  hur 
ried  through  many  an  original  play,  but  the  re 
sults  have  not  been  for  the  library  lamp.  Not 
even  the  success  of  great  actors  in  leading  parts 
could  metamorphose  into  literature  John  Howard 
Payne's  "  Brutus";  John  Augustus  Stone's  "  Meta- 
mora ;  or,  The  Last  of  the  Wampanoags "  ; 
Robert  Montgomery  Bird's  "The  Gladiator,"  or 
Frank  Murdock's  "  Davy  Crockett."  There  has, 
on  the  other  hand,  been  no  lack  in  America  of 
plays  written,  but  not  produced  ;  yet  the  closet 
drama,  from  Thomas  Godfrey's  "Prince  of  Par- 
thia"  (written  about  1759)  to  Longfellow's  "The 
Spanish  Student,"  has,  in  accordance  with  its 
deserts,  won  little  more  fame  than  the  acted  play. 
When  one  has  named  George  H.  Boker's  "  Fran- 
cesca  da  Rimini,"  the  American  list  of  dramas 
possessing  fair  literary  rank  is  nearly  exhausted. 

A  hundred  years  ago,  however,  the  prospects 
of  the  American  play  were  relatively  bright. 
Dwight's  "  Conquest  of  Canaan  "  had  appeared  in 
1785,  and  had  been  chronicled  with  chastened 
pride  in  Dr.  Abiel  Holmes'  "Annals  of  America" 
as  "  the  first  grave  poem  of  the  epic  class,  written 
by  an  American  poet,  printed  in  America."  Two 
years  later  was  presented  at  the  John  Street 
Theatre,  New  York,  with  similar  gratulation  in 
the  Prologue,  the  first  American  play  ever  publicly 


1 8  American  Literature. 

presented  by  professional  actors.  This  was 
"The  Contrast,  a  Comedy;  in  five  acts:  written 
by  a  Citizen  of  the  United  States,"  to  wit,  Royall 
Royall  Tyier,Tyler,  afterward  Chief-Justice  of  Ver- 
1758-1826.  'mont.  « The  Contrast,"  *  its  authors' 
first  venture  in  literature,  was  certainly  a  better 
production,  in  its  way,  than  "  The  Conquest  of 
Canaan."  If  we  can  imagine  that  the  same  indi 
vidual,  in  those  days  of  Puritan  hatred  of  the 
drama,  happened  to  read  the  "  epic  "  and  also  to 
hear  the  play,  he  might  well  have  prophesied  that 
the  American  manufacture  of  comedies  would  be 
livelier  and  more  praiseworthy  than  the  making 
of  religious  or  patriotic  epics.  "The  Contrast" 
is  far  from  being  a  great  comedy  ;  it  is  crude  and 
imperfect  ;  but  it  is  in  parts  bright  and  witty  ;  its 
"stage  Yankee  "  was  the  worthy  prototype  of  a 
long  line  of  similar  creations  ;  and  it  possesses  at 
least  one  advantage  over  many  a  play  of  famous 
authorship  :  that  of  adaptability  for  public  pre 
sentation.  Much  inferior,  in  every  way,  was 
wniiam  Duniap,  William  Dunlap's  '•  The  Father  ;  or 
1766-1839.  American  Shandyism.  A  Comedy  in 

five  acts:  written  by  a  Citizen  of  New  York." 
This  play,  produced  in  1 788,  reflects  the  sentimen- 
talism  then  rising  to  its  highest  power ;  the  suc 
cessful  lover  is  a  sort  of  feeble  American  Grandi- 
son  ;  and  the  Father,  the  foiled  villain,  and  the 

*  Beautifully  and  accurately  reprinted,  under  the  editorship  of  Mr. 
Thomas  J.  McKee,  as  No.  i  of  the  publications  of  the  Duniap  Society, 
New  York,  1887.  The  second  issue  in  this  series,  edited  by  the  same  com 
petent  specialist,  is  Dunlap's  "The  Father,  or  American  Shandyism,"  and 
the  fourth  is  Dunlap's  "  Andre." 


Early    Verse-Making  in  America.  19 

several  women,  certainly  avoid  the  danger  of 
offending  human  nature  by  any  over-accurate  rep 
resentation  of  virtues  or  vices.  Dunlap  wrote  and 
adapted  more  than  sixty  plays  ;  and  by  his  books, 
paintings,  and  personal  influence  decidedly  and 
wholesomely  promoted  the  American  drama  and 
American  art.  Not  a  genius,  and  neither  a  good 
playwright  nor  a  good  painter,  he  performed  a 
pioneer  work  now  cordially  remembered  and  prop 
erly  honored.  His  failure  in  "Andre"  was  no 
worse  than  that  of  many  successors  in  trying  to 
make  a  drama  out  of  a  tempting  but  difficult 
theme. 

John  Howard  Payne  equalled  Dunlap  and  far 
outstripped  Tyler  in  the  number  -and  pretentious 
ness  of  his  dramatic  undertakings.  The  list  of 
his  tragedies,  comedies,  and  operas,  as  chronicled 
by  his  enthusiastic  bioqrapher,  includes 

John  Howard 

more  than  sixty  names,  and  cannot  fail  Payne, 


•i  -1  •  n 

to  strike  with  surprise  all  but  specially- 
informed  readers.  Save  "  Brutus  "  and  perhaps 
"  Charles  II.,"  these  productions  are  impartially 
forgotten  ;  and  the  name  of  Brutus,  even,  is  asso 
ciated  in  the  public  mind,  with  certain  actors  and 
not  with  the  author.  "  Brutus,"  as  materially 
revised  by  the  players  of  its  leading  part,  is  a  vig 
orous  and  dramatically-effective  play,  marked  by 
an  obvious  strength  of  situation,  and  by  something 
praiseworthy  in  the  delineation  of  character. 
Were  it  included  among  the  volumes  of  such  an 
Elizabethan  dramatist  as  Middleton,  it  would 


20  American  Literature. 

easily  and  justly  find  occasional  readers,  and 
admirers  whose  enthusiasm  would  not  be  unpar 
donable.  A  Booth  need  not  be  ashamed,  as  an 
American,  to  repeat  with  his  wonted  grace  and 
strength  such  lines  by  an  American  playwright  as 
these  which  I  transcribe  as  the  best  in  the  play : 

here  all  are  slaves 
None  but  the  fool  is  happy. 

Tarquinia  comes.     Go,  worship  the  bright  sun, 
And  let  poor  Brutus  wither  in  the  shade. 

Hark  I  the  storm  rides  on, 

The  scolding  winds  drive  through  the  clattering  rain, 
And  loudly  screams  the  haggard  witch  of  night. 

When  forth  you  walk,  may  the  red  flaming  sun 
Strike  you  with  livid  plagues  ! 
Vipers  that  die  not  slowly  gnaw  your  heart ! 
May  earth  be  to  you  but  one  wilderness  I 

Behold  that  frozen  corse  ! 
See  where  the  lost  Lucretia  sleeps  in  death  1 
She  was  the  mark  and  model  of  the  time, 
The  mould  in  which  each  female  face  was  formed, 
The  very  shrine  and  sacristy  of  virtue. 

If  mad  ambition  in  this  guilty  frame 
Had  strung  one  kingly  fibre, — yea,  but  one, — 
By  all  the  gods,  this  dagger  which  I  hold 
Should  rip  it  out,  though  it  entwined  my  heart. 

I  am  not  mad,  but  as  the  lion  is, 

When  he  breaks  down  the  toils  that  tyrant  craft 

Hath  spread  to  catch  him. 


Early   Verse-Making  in  America.  21 

Son  of  Marcus  Junius, 
When  will  the  tedious  gods  permit  thy  soul 
To  walk  abroad  in  her  own  majesty, 
And  throw  this  vigor  of  thy  madness  from  thee, 
To  avenge  my  father's  and  my  brother's  murder  ? 

To  the  moon,  folly  1  Vengeance,  I  embrace  thee ! 

Poor  youth  !  Thy  pilgrimage  is  at  an  end  ! 
A  few  sad  steps  have  brought  thee  to  the  brink 
Of  that  tremendous  precipice  whose  depth 
No  thought  of  man  can  fathom. 

I  could  select  similar  lines  that  fall  from  the 
mouths  of  other  characters  in  the  play,  sometimes 
with  an  Elizabethan  aptness : 

Yet  sometimes,  when  the  moody  fit  doth  take  him, 
He  will  not  speak  for  days ;  yea,  rather  starve 
Than  utter  nature's  cravings  ;  then,  anon 
He'll  prattle  shrewdly,  with  such  witty  folly 
As  almost  betters  reason. 

I  have  seen 

A  little  worthless  village  cur  all  night 
Bay  with  incessant  noise  the  silver  moon, 
While  she,  serene,  throned  in  her  pearle'd  car, 
Sailed  in  full  state  along. 

It  is  not  to  be  forgotten,  however,  that  Payne, 
with  acknowledged  and  Elizabethan  freedom, 
"  had  no  hesitation  in  adopting  the  conception 
and  language"  of  his  seven  predecessors  in  the 
same  theme,  and  that  bombast  and  weakness  are 
easily  to  be  found  in  his  own  work. 

Seldom  have  the  annals  of  literature  proved 
more  conclusively  than  in  Payne's  case,  that  the 
production  of  one  heart-lyric  is  almost  the  easiest 
way  to  win  a  long  renown.  For  Payne  the  play- 


22  American  Literature. 

wright,  actor,  editor,  miscellaneous  poet,  and  ob 
scure  diplomat,  the  public  now  cares  nothing  ;  but 
Payne  as  author  of  one  little  song  is  enshrined 
in  the  popular  heart ;  his  body  was  honorably 
brought  from  his  foreign  death-place  to  rest  in  his 
native  land ;  and  needless  monuments  preserve 
the  fame  of  him  whose  renown  depends  upon  a 
universal  knowledge  of  his  masterpiece.  "  Home, 
Sweet  Home,"  severed  from  its  well-known  music, 
and  measured  by  strictly  artistic  canons,  is  but  a 
poor  little  poem  ;  yet  it  is  genuine  and  catholic, 
hence  it  outweighs  the  hundreds  of  acts  and 
scenes  which  Payne  presented  to  the  play-going 
public  of  America  and  England. 

The  "  national  drama"  maybe  dismissed  with 
the  remark  that  when  Americans  produce  plays  of 
sound  and  original  construction,  of  felicitous  dec 
oration,  of  national  spirit,  and  of  general  interest, 
they  will  attain  the  dramatic  success  hitherto 
denied. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE    DAWN    OF    IMAGINATION. 

IN  the  year  1794,  just  after  the  constitutional 
history  of  the  United  States  had  fairly  begun, 
there  appeared  in  New  York  a  little  volume  en 
titled  "  The  Columbian  Muse :  a  Selection  of 
American  Poetry,  from  various  Authors  of  Estab 
lished  Reputation."  The  muse  was  more  Colum 
bian  than  poetic  ;  and  the  authors'  reputations  do 
not  now  appear  so  firmly  "  established  "  as  they 
were  thought  to  be  a  century  ago.  The  book 
sampled  the  work  of  Livingston,  Freneau, 
Dwight,  Trumbull,  Barlow,  Dunlap,  and  others 
even  more  obscure.  In  one  sense  it  was  a  suffi 
ciently  discouraging  sign,  but  it  showed  that 
poetic  industry  had  appeared,  though  genius  was 
lacking.  Imagination  had  not  characterized  our 
theological  treatises,  though  some  of  them 
proved,  at  least,  their  right  to  be  called  visionary 
and  evanescent  ;  nor  had  it  marked  our  political 
speeches  and  public  documents,  notwithstanding 
ark  occasional  eloquent  apostrophe,  or  clear  vision 
of  the  future  results  of  a  noble  theory.  The 
dawn  of  true  literature,  however,  was  not  long  to 
delay;  in  prose  the  work  of  Irving  was  about  to 
interest  readers  in  two  nations,  and  in  verse  we 
were  to  have  something  better  than  mechanical 

23 


24  American  Literature. 

pentameters  or  painfully  artificial  rhymes.  The 
"  rosy  fingers "  of  this  long-expected  dawn  were 
first  to  brighten  the  skies  above  the  Hudson,  not 
those  which  hung  above  the  more  melancholy 
waters  of  Massachusetts  Bay ;  and 

Joseph  Rodman  %  J 

Drake,  the  legendary  land  of  Rip  van  Winkle 

1795-1820.  .-ii  i  r 

was  to  be  visited  by  a  poet  who  found 
his  theme  in  fairy-land,  not  in  Columbia  nor  in 
Canaan. 

''The  Culprit  Fay,"  by  Joseph  Rodman  Drake, 
appeared  in  1819,  when  the  author  was  twenty- 
four  years  old  ;  it  was  the  outgrowth  of  a  conver 
sation  between  Drake,  Halleck,  and  Cooper  con 
cerning  the  unsung  poetry  of  American  rivers. 
Its  little  story  of  a  sinning  fay's  contrition,  con 
fession,  and  satisfaction  is  told  in  a  way  that 
charmed  my  early  boyhood  and  pleases  still  ;  for 
it  shows  that  American  verse,  under  Drake's 
hand,  had  emerged  from  pious  propriety  into  the 
realm  of  fancy  and  the  borderland  of  imagination. 
Drake  wrote  swiftly,  and  deemed  his  poems  value 
less  and  only  worthy  of  the  fire  ;  but  one  finds 
something  savable  in  lines  like  these : 

The  stars  are  on  the  moving  stream, 

And  fling,  as  its  ripples  gently  flow, 
A  burnished  length  of  wavy  beam 

In  an  eel-like,  spiral  line  below ; 

The  winds  are  whist,  and  the  owl  is  still, 

The  bat  in  the  shelvy  rock  is  hid, 
And  naught  is  heard  on  the  lonely  hill 
But  the  cricket's  chirp,  and  the  answer  shrill 

Of  the  gauze-winged  katydid, 


The  Dawn  of  Imagination.  25 

And  the  plaint  of  the  wailing  whippoorwill, 
Who  mourns  unseen,  and  ceaseless  sings 

Ever  a  note  of  wail  and  woe, 

Till  morning  spreads  her  rosy  wings, 

And  earth  and  sky  in  her  glances  glow. 

'Tis  the  hour  of  fairy  ban  and  spell  : 
The  wood-tick  has  kept  the  minutes  well ; 
He  has  counted  them  all  with  click  and  stroke, 
Deep  in  the  heart  of  the  mountain  oak, 
And  he  has  awakened  the  sentry  elve 

Who  sleeps  with  him  in  the  haunted  tree, 
To  bid  him  ring  the  hour  of  twelve, 

And  call  the  fays  to  their  revelry ; 
Twelve  small  strokes  on  his  tinkling  bell — 
('Twas  made  of  the  white  snail's  pearly  shell) — 
"  Midnight  comes,  and  all  is  well ! 
Hither,  hither  wing  your  way  ! 
'Tis  the  dawn  of  the  fairy  day." 
They  come  from  beds  of  lichen  green, 
They  creep  from  the  mullein's  velvet  screen ; 
Some  on  the  backs  of  beetles  fly 

From  the  silver  tops  of  moon-touched  trees, 
Where  they  swung  in  their  cobweb  hammocks  high, 

And  rocked  about  in  the  evening  breeze ; 
Some  from  the  hum-bird's  downy  nest — 

They  had  driven  him  out  by  elfin  power, 
And  pillowed  on  plumes  of  his  rainbow  breast, 

Had  slumbered  there  till  the  charmed  hour; 
Some  had  lain  in  the  scoop  of  the  rock, 

With  glittering  ising-stars  inlaid ; 
And  some  had  opened  the  four-o'clock, 

And  stole  within  its  purple  shade. 

And  now  they  throng  the  moonlight  glade, 
Above — below — on  every  side, 

Their  little  minim  forms  arrayed 
In  the  tricksy  pomp  of  fairy  pride. 


26  American  Literature. 

Drake's  services  to  nascent  American  poetry 
also  included  the  composition  of  a  spirited  lyric 
to  "  The  American  Flag,"  familiar  in  the  antholo 
gies,  and  long  a  favorite  with  the  school-boys  of 
the  nation.  Its  tropes  are  somewhat  strained, 
and  its  sensational  scheme  narrowly  escapes  bom 
bast  ;  but  on  the  whole — like  a  greater  poem, 
Shelley's  "  Cloud  "-—it  avoids  the  bathetic  and  pro 
duces  an  honest  and  stirring  effect  upon  the 
reader.  The  "azure  robe  of  night,"  "  stars  of 
glory,"  "gorgeous  dyes,"  "  milky  baldric,"  "light 
ning-lances,"  "thunder-drum  of  heaven,"  "gory 
sabres,"  "shoots  of  flame,"  and  "meteor-glances" 
of  Drake's  poem  are  parts  of  a  symmetrical  whole 
and  are  accompanied  by  expressions  of  true 
thought.  The  lyric,  in  its  entirety,  easily  sur 
passes  such  bald,  rude  rhymes  as  Robert  Treat 
Paine,  Jr.'s,  "Adams  and  Liberty,"  Joseph  Hop-t- 
kinson's  "  Hail  Columbia,"  or  Francis  Scott 
Key's  "Star-Spangled  Banner."  These  last- 
named  songs,  like  "  Yankee  Doodle  "  itself,  are  so 
inseparably  connected  with  certain  airs,  and  so 
closely  enshrined  in  the  patriotic  heart,  that  no 
one  stops  to  think  of  their  literary  poverty.  The 
young  American  nation  had  found  no  such  singers 
as  those  who  voiced  the  stirring  hopes  of  Ger 
many  in  the  days  of  Napoleon's  attempted  abduc 
tion  and  murder  of  a  continent. 

When  young  Drake    died,    his    friend    Halleck 
Fitz-Greene     Put  ^s  deep  and  unaffected  grief  into 

Haiieck          that  tender  poem  of  which  four  lines  are 
1790-1867.  .          ii-t 

universally  known  : 


The  Dawn  of  Imagination.  27 

Green  be  the  turf  above  thee, 

Friend  of  my  better  days  ; 
None  knew  thee  but  to  love  thee, 

Nor  named  thee  but  to  praise. 

Drake  and  Halleck  worked  together  as  friends 
and  fellow-lovers  of  poetry.  With  much  that  was 
perishable  or  valueless,  in  which  division  their 
humorous  verse  must  be  included,  they  produced 
some  things  that  have  attained  what  may  fairly  be 
called  a  lasting  renown,  though  not  the  highest. 
Drake's  "  American  Flag"  and  Halleck's  "  Marco 
Bozzaris  "  were  read,  and  memorized,  and  printed 
in  the  collections,  because  people  liked  them  and 
were  stirred  by  their  patriotism  or  pathos.  Lim 
ited  in  range  and  modest  in  achievement,  Ameri 
can  poetry  had  reached  a  time  when  its  principal 
productions  could  take  care  of  themselves.  A 
"  poem"  that  depends  for  readers  merely  upon  its 
piety,  or  its  patriotism,  or  its  local  color,  is  sure 
to  be  forgotten  soon.  Halleck  was  as  patriotic 
as  Barlow,  and  as  fond  of  local  themes  as 
Dwight ;  but  he  possessed  what  both  Barlow  and 
Dwight  lacked  :  a  spark  of  poetic  fire.  There  was 
a  genuine  force  in  his  lament  for  Drake  and  his 
stirring  lyric  about  Marco  Bozzaris  the  Greek. 
Halleck,  in  the  foolish  days  of  American  criticism, 
used  to  be  mentioned  most  respectfully  as  one  of 
our  greater  bards.  This  he  certainly  was  not ; 
but  his  work  marked  a  step  in  advance  toward 
that  literary  self-reliance  which  was  at  first  so  pain 
fully  lacking  in  the  United  states.  Halleck,  at  least, 
felt  the  difference  between  imagination  and  raw 


28  American  Literatiire. 

ambition,  and  this  difference  he  was  able  to  make 
apparent  to  his  readers,  though  they  did  not  stop 
to  indulge  in  close  critical  analysis. 

Elsewhere,  along  the  Atlantic   coast,  appeared 
signs  of  the  new  day  which  was  lending  distinction 
to  the  poets  of  the  Hudson.     Washington  Allston 
and  Richard   Henry  Dana,   on   the  banks   of  that 
river  Charles  which  was  to  be    made    famous  by 
Longfellow,  were  giving  to    Massachusetts  some 
welcome  tokens  of  future  achievement.     Allston, 
one  of  the  pioneers  of  American   art,  was  a  man 
of  fine  thought  and  poetic    feeling,  which  some 
times  found   expression   in  verse  or  fiction.      He 
had  lived  and  studied  in  Europe  ;  the  pictures   of 
the  masters  were  his  models  ;  and  his  list  of  per 
sonal    friends    included     famous     names.       Early 
transcendentalism,  in  the  form  of  spiritual  recep 
tivity  and  insight,  was  beginning  to    affect  Eng 
land    and    America  ;    and    Allston    shared    with 
Coleridge  the  powerful  effect  of  the  new    move 
ment.     Like  other  young  Americans,  he  brought 
home    with    him    somewhat     of     that     nameless 
potency,  that  attitude  toward    life,  which  we  call 
culture  ;  and  culture  was  the  very  thing  the  young 
nation  had  most  lacked.     Allston's  poems  and  little 
romance  are  forgotten,  but    his  biblical    pictures, 
because  of  their  form  and  color,  will  retain  some 
absolute  as  well  as  relative    fame.     Dana,   in  his 
Richard  Henry    lon£  ^e'  beheld -the  rise  of  American 
?78n-i8  poetry  from  humble  imitations  to  the 

manly  triumphs  of  a  free  imagination  ; 
and  in  its  early  years  he  aided  its  progress,  and 


The  Dawn  of  Imagination.  29 

the  development  of  culture.  While  Allston  was 
painting  and  lecturing  on  art,  Dana  was  expound 
ing  Shakespeare  to  audiences  more  interested 
than  critical.  Dana  was  one  of  the  Americans 
who  made  unsuccessful  attempts  to  domesticate 
the  discursive  periodical-miscellany  of  the  Addi- 
sonian  type ;  but  his  editorship  of  the  most 
famous  Boston  quarterly  still  further  aided  in  the 
spread  of  knowledge  and  gracious  letters.  When 
his  long  and  once-known  poem,  "  The  Buccaneer," 
was  re-issued  in  a  magazine,  a  few  years  ago, 
some  critics  thought  it  a  new  production,  so  com 
pletely  had  it  passed  into  the  shadows.  Its  metri 
cal  evenness  and  its  smoothly-turned  descriptive 
phrases  approached,  but  quite  missed,  the  success 
won  by  Bryant.  Dana,  like  Charles  Sprague,  is 
one  of  the  bygone  figures  in  our  literature,  whose 
relative  importance  must  constantly  diminish  ;  but 
those  venerable  Bostonians,  when  they  passed  to 
rest,  could  feel  that  they  had  in  some  small  degree 
prepared  the  wray,  by  their  creations  and  their 
criticisms,  for  their  stronger  successors. 

When  one  has  patiently  read  the  eight  hundred 
pages  containing  the  "  poetical  works "  of  Per- 
cival,  the  chief  of  the  Connecticut  bards  of  the 
second  generation,  it  is  difficult  to  pay  eg  Gateg 
him  even  the  relative  praise  that  be-  Perdvai, 
longs  to  a  pioneer.  Percival  repeatedly 
crosses,  in  the  wrong  direction,  the  line  that  sep 
arates  the  sublime  from  the  ridiculous,  the  soulful 
from  the  sentimental.  The  age  of  sickly  sweet 
sentimentality  had  come  upon  America,  and  Per- 


30  American  Literature. 

cival  too  often  yielded  entirely  to  its  influence, 
instead  of  accepting  that  influence  in  part,  that  he 
might  turn  it  to  higher  service.  He  could  find, 
like  Bryant,  a  poetic  theme  in  "  Consumption/' 
and  could  write  upon  it  eighty-two  lines  begin 


nmg 


There  is  a  sweetness  in  woman's  decay, 
When  the  light  of  beauty  is  fading  away,  etc.; 

and  he  everywhere  hunted  up  themes  for  so-called 
"  reflective"  verse.  The  reflective  idea  is  also 
favored  by  that  index  of  first  lines  which  makes 
his  works  seem  somewhat  painfully  decorous  and 
monotonously  unreadable ;  but  the  variety  of 
subject  is  surely  sufficiently  great.  Imitating 
half  a  dozen  of  the  greater  English  poets  of  his 
time,  Percival  found  themes  in  sky,  earth,  and 
water,  in  ancient  history  and  in  modern  episode. 
He  ranged  from  "  Retrospection "  to  "  Genius 
Waking ";  from  "Midnight  Music"  to  "Perry's 
Victory  on  Lake  Erie  "  ;  from  the  Violet  or  the 
Gentiana  Crinita  to  the  Good  Man  : — 

How  happy  is  the  pure,  good  man,  whose  life 
Was  always  good,  who  in  the  tender  years 
Of  childhood,  and  the  trying  time  of  youth, 
Was  shielded  by  a  kind,  parental  hand  ! 

who  rises  with  the  lark  and  secretly  prays  in  blank 
verse  for  five  pages. 

But  the  voluminous  Percival  gives  evidence  of 
the  fact  that  the  American  mind,  in  his  day,  was 
beginning  to  have  vague  and  imperfect,  but  not 


The  Dawn  of  Imagination.  3 1 

insincere,  poetic  thoughts  and  hopes ;  that  its 
verse-product  was  received  with  some  favor  by  a 
widening  audience ;  and  that  its  themes  were 
sometimes  taken  from  nature  or  from  human 
nature,  and  treated  with  a  pen  that  was  facile,  if 
too  fluent.  If  we  had  never  produced  more  than 
a  Percival,  there  had  never  been  an  American  lit 
erature  ;  but  a  new  land  needs  many  a  little 
builder  before  its  cathedrals  rise  in  the  world's 
view. 

Looking  back  upon  Percival's  works,  the  best 
thing  I  find  is  an  occasional  apt  choice  and  treat 
ment  of  a  subject  taken  from  external  nature,  not 
human  nature.  Percival  sang  of  Seneca  Lake : 

On  thy  fair  bosom,  silver  lake  ! 

The  wild  swan  spreads  his  snowy  sail, 
And  round  his  breast  the  ripples  break, 

As  down  he  bears  before  the  gale 

How  sweet  at  set  of  sun  to  view 
Thy  golden  mirror  spreading  wide, 

And  see  the  mist  of  mantling  blue 

Float  round  the  distant  mountain's  side 

On  thy  fair  bosom,  silver  lake  ! 

O,  I  could  ever  sweep  the  oar, 
When  early  birds  at  morning  wake, 

And  evening  tells  us  toil  is  o'er. 

Another  crude  Connecticut  poet,  J.  G.  C.  Brain- 
ard,  was  writing  hasty  lines  similarly 

1  .  *  *  John  Gardiner 

lacking    in    greatness    but    similarly   Calkins  Brainard, 
i    j    i  -i  1795-1828. 

marked    by    occasional    genuineness. 

Now  the  sea-bird  was  his  theme  : 


32  American  Literature. 

Who  hovers  on  high  o'er  the  lover, 

And  her  who  has  clung  to  his  neck  ? 
Whose  wing  is  the  wing  that  can  cover 
With  its  shadow  the  foundering  wreck  ? 
Tis  the  sea-bird,  sea-bird,  sea-bird, 

Lone  looker  on  despair ; 
The  sea-bird,  sea-bird,  sea-bird, 
The  only  witness  there. 

Again,  he  wrote  of  some  local  stream,  or  of  the 
autumn  woods  he  well  knew : 

The  dead  leaves  strew  the  forest  walk, 

And  withered  are  the  pale,  wild  flowers ; 
The  frost  hangs  black'ning  on  the  stalk, 

The  dew-drops  fall  in  frozen  showers. 

Gone  are  the  Spring's  green  sprouting  bowers, 
Gone  Summer's  rich  and  mantling  vines, 

And  Autumn,  with  her  yellow  hours, 
On  hill  and  plain  no  longer  shines. 

Less  true  and  more  bombastic  was  Brainard's 
once  famous  extemporization  on  Niagara,  which 
he  never  saw.  Essentially  valueless  are  such 
meditations  as  these,  worded  in  feeble  blank 


verse : 


It  would  seem 

As  if  God  poured  thee  from  his  hollow  hand ; 
Had  hung  his  bow  upon  thy  awful  front ; 
Had  spoke  in  that  loud  voice  which  seemed  to  him 
Who  dwelt  in  Patmos  for  his  Saviour's  sake, 
The  sound  of  many  waters  :  and  had  bade 
Thy  flood  to  chronicle  the  ages  back, 
And  notch  his  centuries  in  the  eternal  rocks. 

Deep  calleth  unto  deep.     And  what  are  we, 
That  hear  the  question  of  that  voice  sublime  ? 
Oh  what  are  all  the  notes  that  ever  rang 


The  Dawn  of  Imagination.  33 

From  war's  vain  trumpet  by  thy  thundering  side  ? 
Yea,  what  is  all  the  riot  man  can  make, 
In  his  short  life,  to  thy  unceasing  roar  ? 
And  yet,  bold  babbler !  what  art  thou  to  Him 
Who  drowned  a  world,  and  heaped  the  waters  far 
Above  its  loftiest  mountains  ? — A  light  wave 
That  breaks  and  whispers  of  its  maker's  might ! 

The  lyrical  spirit,  with  its  love  of  nature  and 
of  emotion,  swiftly  expressed,  was  stealing  in 
upon  the  South  as  well  as  the  North.  From  the 
South  was  to  come  our  most  distinctly  _.  ,  ,  _ _ 

*      Richard  Henry 

lyrical   poet,   Poe  ;    and  there  already  wiide, 

was  Richard  Henry  Wilde,  Irishman, 
congressman,  and  man  of  culture.  We  have  for 
gotten  his  long  poem,  "  Hesperia,"  but  remember 
these  ''Stanzas" — everybody  wrote  "stanzas,"  in 
those  days,  unless,  indeed,  he  wrote  a  "  Conquest 
of  Canaan,"  a  "  Columbiad,"  or  a  "  Hadad  "  : 

My  life  is  like  the  summer  rose 

That  opens  to  the  morning  sky, 
But  ere  the  shades  of  evening  close 

Is  scattered  on  the  ground — to  die  ! 
Yet  on  the  rose's  humble  bed 
The  sweetest  dews  of  night  are  shed, 
As  if  she  wept  the  waste  to  see — 
But  none  shall  weep  a  tear  for  me  ! 

My  life  is  like  the  autumn  leaf 

That  trembles  in  the  moon's  pale  ray ; 
Its  hold  is  frail,  its  date  is  brief, 

Restless — and  soon  to  pass  away ! 
Yet  ere  that  leaf  shall  fall  and  fade 
The  parent  tree  will  mourn  its  shade, 
The  winds  bewail  the  leafless  tree — 
But  none  shall  breathe  a  sigh  for  me  ! 


34  American  Literature. 

My  life  is  like  the  prints  which  feet 

Have  left  on  Tampa's  desert  strand ; 
Soon  as  the  rising  tide  shall  beat, 

All  trace  will  vanish  from  the  sand ; 
Yet,  as  if  grieving  to  efface 
All  vestige  of  the  human  race, 
On  that  lone  shore  loud  moans  the  sea — 
But  none,  alas !  shall  mourn  for  me  ! 


The  feeble  twitterings  of  the  American  song 
sters  were  beginning  to  be  heard  beyond  the 
ocean.  Byron,  whose  praise  depended  on  fancy 
rather  than  reason,  was  good  enough  to  commend 
the  lyric  just  cited,  which  was  fairly  representative 
of  the  minor  poetry  beginning  to  appear  in  one 
section  of  the  new  world  ;  while  the  good-natured 
Southey,  fond  of  poetical  bombast,  bestowed 
upon  Mrs.  Maria  Gowen  Brooks  laudations  fit  for 
Sappho  or  Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning.  Mrs. 
Brooks  represented  sentimentalism  at 

Maria  (Gowen) 

Brooks,  the  full ;  she  was  called  by  the   name 

of  "  Maria  del'Occidente  ; "  and  in 
"Zophiel;  or,  The  Bride  of  Seven,"  she  success 
fully  transferred  to  America  many  of  the  weakest 
elements  in  the  English  romanticism  of  1825.  In 
her  verse,  zephyrs  play  with  ringlets,  lips  resem 
ble  bud-bursting  flowers,  eyebrows  have  flexile 
arches,  cheeks  are  vermilion  and  feet  silvery  ;  the 
turf  is  velvet,  the  noon  fervid,  the  midnight 
peaceful ;  the  dove  responds  to  love,  and  lutes 
reecho  flutes.  But  all  things  go  to  prepare  the 
way  for  a  nation's  literature;  "  Zophiel"  is  at 
least  better,  as  well  as  later,  than  the  "  Magnalia 
Christi  Americana." 


The  Dawn  of  Imagination.  35 

By  this  time,  however,  the  day  of  small  things 
in  American  poetry  had  passed,  and  the  country 
could  boast  one  poet  relatively,  though  not  abso 
lutely,  of  the  first  rank,  and  deserving  notice  and 
praise  even  by  absolute  standards.  The  work  of 
\  William  Cullen  Bryant  is  not  to  be 

•      .  .  William  Cullen 

measured  as  a  curiosity,  like    that    of  Bryant. 

A  __  11  •  1794-1878. 

Anne    Bradstreet,    or   a   well-meaning 

attempt,  like  that  of  Joel  Barlow,  or  a  promise, 
like  that  of  Drake.  Neither  does  his  place  in 
literature  depend  upon  a  meritorious  lyric  or  two, 
such  as  Halleck's  "  Marco  Bozzaris  "  or  Wilde's 
"  My  Life  is  Like  a  Summer  Rose."  It  is  true 
that  Bryant  wrote  short  poems,  not  epics,  dramas, 
or  idyls  ;  and  that  his  name  is  closely  connected 
with  three  or  four  productions  of  special  fame  and 
merit.  But  we  feel,  in  reading  his  verse,  that  its 
successes  are  not  due  to  accident.  It  comes  , 
from  the  brain  of  a  strong  man,  in  full  possession 
of  his  powers.  It  is  the  product  of  a  thinker  and 
of  an«  artist  \  it  represents  both  imagination  and 
art ;  and  its  themes  are  taken  from  nature  and 
the  soul.  Bryant,  as  has  been  said,  cannot  justly  I 
be  ranked  with  poets  of  the  first  class.  Neither 
in  range  nor  in  excellence  of  achievement  is  his 
verse  of  the  highest.  Yet  his  thoughts  are  deep, » 
manly,  and  true  ;  his  observation  of  skies,  woods, 
and  waters,  and  his  power  of  description  of  the 
external  world,  justly  entitle  him  to  his  wide 
renown  as  a  "poet  of  nature."  He  has  been 
amiably  called  our  American  Wordsworth,  but  he  * 
was  no  copyist.  He  never  gave  us  poetry  as 


36  American  Literatiire. 

great  or  apt  as  Wordsworth's  best ;  but  he  did 
not  sink  to  Wordworth's  flatness,  nor  wander 
away  to  the  fools'  region  of  Wordsworth's  silli 
ness.  Nay  more,  he  interprets  the  meaning  of 
nature,  as  the  mirror  and  teacher  of  the  soul. 
That  which  reflection  must  dwell  upon,  and  that 
which  art  may  portray,  in  life  and  its  surround 
ings,  Bryant  worthily  represents,  in  forms  not  a 
few.  All  that  is  lacking  in  his  writing  is  the 
•  force  and  fire  of  genius.  It  represents  medita 
tion  and  expression  almost  at  their  best  ;  but  it 
belongs  not  with  the  work  of  the  greater  choir. 

It  seems  proper,  therefore,  to  close  this  chapter, 
on  the  dawn  of  imagination  in  America,  with  the 
name  of  Bryant.  By  the  length  and  importance 
of  his  life-work  ;  by  his  early  triumphs,  middle- 
life  successes,  and  octogenarian  achievements,  he 
left  to  us  a  remarkably  complete  and  valuable 
literary  legacy,  enriched,  perforce,  by  a  personal 
character  of  serenity  and  strength,  albeit  of  a  cer 
tain  coldness.  Bryant's  poems  are  by  no  means 
lacking  in  the  quality-  of  imagination ;  but  his  im 
agination  does  not  soar  and  sing  in  distant  and 
ultimate  skies.  Within  his  limits  he  need  not 
have  done  better :  let  not  his  successors  complain 
of  the  comparatively  narrow  tract  on  Parnassus 
on  which  he  dwelt.  As  Franklin  was  the  first 
man  to  make  the  American  mind  felt  as  a  force  in 
other  lands  than  ours ;  as  Irving  was  our  pioneer 
in  carrying  forth  a  distinct  literary  message  and 
achievement  ;  so  Bryant  was  the  first  poet  to  give 
us  verse  that  needed  no  adventitious  excuse  or 


The  Dawn  of  Imagination.  37 

recommendation.     When  "  Thanatopsis  "  appeared 
in  The  North   American   Review,    in 

"  Thanatopsis/ 

1817,  true  poetry  had  come  to,  and 
had  come  from,  America.  Its  author  was  but 
twenty-three  years  of  age,  but  he  had  been  spin 
ning  rhymes,  or  making  verse,  for  -more  than  half 
of  his  short  lifetime.  At  ten  he  was  a  contributor 
to  the  country  newspapers,  and  at  fourteen  a 
political  satirist  in  metre.  It  would  seem  that 
the  poetic  spirit  could  not  longer  keep  silent  in 
the  United  States. 

"  Thanatopsis "  is  a  Saxon  and  New  England 
poem.  Its  view  of  death  reflects  the  race  charac-  • 
teristics  of  ten  centuries.  It  shows  "  no  trace  of 
age,  no  fear  to  die."  "  Its  morality  and  its  trust  • 
are  ethnic  rather  than  Christian.  It  nowhere* 
expresses  that  belief  in  personal  immortality 
which  the  author  possessed  and  elsewhere  stated. 
It  is  a  piece  of  verse  of  which  any  language  or  age 
might  be  proud.  Yet,  as  I  have  just  said,  this 
strong  and  .serene  utterance  of  philosophy  and  of 
poetry,  expressed  in  the  best  blank  verse  of  the 
period,  came  from  a  mere  boy,  who  but  a  few 
years  before  had  been  writing  political  poems, 
dashed  with  fire  and  vitriol,  on  "  The  Embargo  " 
and  " The  Spanish  Revolution."  In  its  earliest 
publication  "  Thanatopsis "  was  much  less  than 
perfect,  and  was  manifestly  inferior  to  the  final 
version.  But  even  then  it  was,  as  it  is  now,  a 
microcosm  of  the  author's  mind  and  powers.  It 
includes  the  thought  of  "The  Ages,"  read  by 
young  Bryant  to  the  Harvard  Phi  Beta  Kappa 


38  American  Liter atiire. 

Society  in  1821;  and  its  mood  is  not  dissimilar  to 
that  of  "The  Flood  of  Years,"  which  was  the  fruit 
of  the  author's  musings  in  old  age.  That  essen 
tial  stability  of  mind  of  which  this  early  and  most 
favored  poem  gave  witness,  never  forsook  the 
poet,  though  of  course  his  choice  and  art  were 
fallible.  Whether  he  was  traveller,  story-teller, 
essayist,  biographical  orator,  political  editor,  or 
free-trade  reformer,  he  carried  into  the  varied 
work  of  life  the  solemn  and  cheering  lessons 
derived  from  the  contemplation  of  a  universe  at 
once  majestic  and  ever-changing. 

The  results  of  Bryant's  labors,  as  a  man  and  an 
author,  might  easily  have  been  forecast  from  the 
evident  character  of  his  mind  and  poetic  product. 

The  author  of    "  Thanatopsis"    could* 
Product P°etiC   not   be  a   voluminous    versifier.       He 

must  write  comparatively  little,  and 
chiefly  on  themes  suggested  by  nature  or  by  the 
reflective  temper.  The  residuum  of  his  work  is 
therefore  valuable,  since  his  power  to  treat  such 
themes  could  not  be  questioned,  after  his  first 
success,  and  since  it  remained  with  him  to  the 
end.  English  poetry,  after  its  freshness  in  the 
work  of  Chaucer  and  of  a  few  lyrists  of  later 
periods,  had  painfully  lacked  the  spontaneousness 
and  beauty  of  out-door  nature.  In  the  eighteenth 
century  its  see-saw  artificiality  had  been  deplor 
able.  Cowper  had  prepared  the  way  for  Words 
worth  and  his  fellows  ;  and  the  romantic  revival 
in  England,  and  even  in  Germany,  was  arousing 
the  American  versifiers.  So  far  as  this  revival 


The  Dawn  of  Imagination.  39 

was  characterized  by  a  willingness  to  regard 
nature  as  the  friend  and  fellow  and  mentor  of 
man,  Bryant  was  its  principal  American  repre 
sentative.  He  forgot  not  that  the  poetry  of 
nature,  when  transferred  to  the  printed  page, 
must  be  open  and  free,  and  accordingly  he  was 
not  a  mere  maker  of  words  and  metres  in  the 
library.  But  nature,  in  Bryant's  view,  had  some 
thing  to  say  as  well  as  to  show ;  and  the  lesson  as 
well  as  the  vision  of  nature  is  presented  in  "  A 
Forest  Hymn,"  "  To  a  Waterfowl,"  "  Monument 
Mountain,"  "  The  'Death  of  the  Flowers."  The 
many  songs  of  sky,  forest,  "brook,  meadow,  and 
field-path  are  reechoed  by  Bryant  only  in  part. 
His  pages  do  not  resound  with  the  "  thousand 
voices  "  wherewith  "  earth  worships  God."  But 
when  we  do  catch  the  solemn-  tone  of  the  "  earth- 
song,"  in  Bryant's  lines,  we  feel  no  sense  of 
unworthiness.  The  grandeur  may  be  limited  and 
imperfect,  but  it  is  still  grandeur.  Wayward 
beauty  or  tender  suggestiveness  is  not  absent,  but 
each  is  subordinated  to  the  solemn'  reflections 
inspired  by  the  scenes  in  which  we  live.  Some 
curious  students  have  averred,  that  the  key  of 
nature — the  resultant  of  all  the  voices  of  the 
world — -is  A.  This  deep  undertone  is  that  which 
Bryant  heard,  and  to  which  his  verse-music  re 
sponds  in  fit  accord. 

It  is  not  necessarily  an  arraignment  of  a  man 
of  genius  to  declare  that  he  did  not  and  could 
not  do  this  or  that  thing.  That  Bryant  was 


40  American  Liter at^lre. 

unable  to  produce  an  epic,  a  drama,  a  strong 
delineation  of  the  heroic  character,  a  brilliant 
lyric  of  patriotism  or  passion,  a  poem  instinct  with 
daring  imagination,  was  not  necessarily  to  the 
discredit  of  his  powers.  Non  omnia  possumus 

,  omnes.  His  place  was  with  Gray,  not  with  Milton, 
Goethe,  Browning,  or  Burns.  Intense  power  was 
not  his,  nor  broad  creative  range,  nor  soaring 
vision ;  his  marks  were  thoughtfulness  and 
serenity.  But  poets  of  the  second  order  are  not 
so  much  to  be  blamed  for  their  deficiencies  as 
measured  by  their  successes  within  their  proper 
field.  Bryant's  were  apparent,  even  absolutely,  if 
we  do  not  press  the  term  too  far  ;  relatively,  as  has 
been  seen,  they  were  for  a  time  even  command 
ing.  By  and  by  he  must  yield  to  Emerson  the  i 
poetic  seer,  to  Longfellow  the  catholic  singer  of 
sympathy  and  of  art,  to  Poe  the  lyrist  pure  and 
simple.  Bryant's  voice  sounded  out  less  strong 
than  Whittier's,  in  distinctly  American  song ;  and 
even  as  a  descriptive  poet  Whittier,  in  his  artless- 
ness  and  haste,  seemed  truer  to  our  local  life  than 
Bryant,  in  his  reserve  and  quiet  strength.  What 
Bryant  did  and  was  has  been  neatly  summarized 
in  the  phrase  "  narrow  greatness," — only  one  pre 
fers  to  think  of  the  greatness  rather  than  the  nar 
rowness.  There  are  no  mute  inglorious  Miltons 
in  the  field  of  letters  ;  everyone  gets  his  due  ; 
Bryant  has  exactly  received  his  deserved  meed. 
His  limited  greatness  is  made  apparent  by  his 

*  loneliness  ;  there  is  but  one    Bryant.     After   all, 


The  Dazvn  of  Imagination.  41 

whether  a  poet  be  great  or  not  great,  his  place  is 
his  own  if  we  think  of  his  work  as  being  sufficient 
in  itself ;  such,  indeed,  is  the  work  of  the  author 
of  "  Thanatopsis." 

The  chief  of  our  poets  of  meditation,  based 
upon  observation,  are  Bryant  and  Emerson,  if  we 
set  aside  Longfellow  for  the  moment ;  since  his 
poetry,  though  oftea  reflective,  is  more  often 
marked  by  feeling  and  sentiment  than  meditation. 
Between  the  prevalent  attitude  of  Bryant  and 
that  of  Emerson  is  this  difference.  Bryant's  is 
that  of  solemn  acceptance  of  the  exist 
ent  order,  Emerson's  that  of  optimistic 
faith  in  that  order.  Bryant  as  surely 
avoids  the  effect  of  gloom  as  Emerson  avoids 
that  of  gayety.  When  Bryant  was  more  than 
eighty  years  of  age,  in  the  very  year  of  his  death, 
he  wrote  of  Washington  : 

Lo,  where,  beneath  an  icy  shield, 

Calmly  the  mighty  Hudson  flows  ! 
By  snow-clad  fell  and  frozen  field, 

Broadening,  the  lordly  river  goes. 

The  wildest  storm  that  sweeps  through  space, 
And  rends  the  oak  with  sudden  force, 

Can  raise  no  ripple  on  his  face, 
Or  slacken  his  majestic  course. 

Thus,  mid  the  wreck  of  thrones,  shall  live, 
Unmarred,  undimmed,  our  hero's  fame, 

And  years  succeeding  years  shall  give 
Increase  of  honors  to  his  name. 

There  was  something  in  Bryant's  mind  that  was » 
akin  to  Washington's  ;  this  steady  flow  of  thought 


42  American  Literature. 

and  purpose,  beneath  a  calm  exterior,  untossed 
by  storm  or  passion,  marks  Bryant's  poetical  work 
from  the  first.  When  he  forgets  himself,  and 
essays  the  playful  or  humorous,  the  result  is 
melancholy  indeed,  as  in  that  fearful  poem  on  the 
mosquito.  In  general  he  is  the  singer  of 

"  The  victory  of  endurance  born  ;  " 

"  The  eternal  years  of  God ;  " 

"  Old  ocean's  gray  and  melancholy  waste; " 

hills  "  rock-ribbed,  and  ancient  as  the  sun ;  "  and 
an  "  unfaltering  trust "  learned  in  the  groves, 
"  God's  first  temples,"  or  from  nature's  teachings 
under  the  open  sky. 

Bryant  resembles  Emerson  in  the  characteristic « 
of  uniformity.     His    poetry  is    little    affected    by 
the  progress  of  the  author's  life,  or  the 

Bryant's 

Uniformity  changes  and  events  of  the  national  his 
tory.  The  stale  Minerva-comparison  is 
applicable  to  the  early  products  of  this  author's 
mind.  If  we  except  the  political  verse  of  his  boy 
hood,  we  find  little  to  suggest  either  youth  or  age. 
His  occasional  poems  are  not  felicitous,  as  a  rule. 
"  The  Death  of  Lincoln  "  is  a  wooden  thing,  and 
"  The  Death  of  Slavery  "  is  lacking  in  the  fire  of 
Whittier  and  the  art  of  Longfellow.  One  of  his 
distinctly  autobiographic  pieces,  "  A  Lifetime,"  is 
poorer  still  ;  it  carries  us  back  to  the  dreary  days 
of  colonial  doggerel : 

She  leads  by  the  hand  their  first-born, 

A  fair-haired  little  one, 
And  their  eyes  as  they  meet  him  sparkle 

Like  brooks  in  the  morning  sun. 


The  Dawn  of  Imagination.  43 

Another  change,  and  I  see  him 

Where  the  city's  ceaseless  coil 
Sends  up  a  mighty  murmur 

From  a  thousand  modes  of  toil. 

"T^N 

And  there,  mid  the  clash  of  presses,  SlT^ 

He  plies  the  rapid  pen 
In  the  battles  of  opinion, 

That  divide  the  sons  of  men,  etc. 

There  are  one-hundred  and  forty-eight  lines  of 
this  general  kind,  whether  better  or  worse,  written 
in  old  age  by  a  true  poet,   who   had   not   lost   his 
powers,  but  who  never  seemed  able  to   discrimi 
nate    with    certainty    between    good     and     bad. » 
What  Bryant  could  do,  he  could   do   in  youth   as  * 
well   as   in    maturity ;    what   he  could  not  do    in 
youth,  he  never  learned. 

The  use  of  one  of  his  youthful  powers,  that  of 
story-telling,  was  given  up  in  later  years.  With 
Robert  C.  Sands  and  Gulian  C.  Verplanck  he 
edited  for  three  years  (1828-1830)  an  annual 
entitled  "  The  Talisman,"  which  in  a  modest  way 
marked  a  period  in  American  literary 
culture.  "The  Talisman"  for  1829, 
for  instance,  was  a  handsome  volume,  well 
printed  on  what  would  nowadays  be  called  ragged- 
edged  hand-made  paper,  nicely  bound  in  half 
leather,  gilt  top,  and  illustrated  with  ambitious 
but  rather  feeble  steel-engravings  of  American 
origin.  In  its  outward  form  the  book  was  an 
exact  prototype  of  some  of  the  finer  publications 
of  our  own  day  (for  there  has  been  no  improve 
ment  in  the  art  of  printing  for  two  centuries)  ; 


44  American  Literature. 

and,  better  still,  it  had  in  its  contents  an  unques 
tionable  tone  of  literary  culture  and  power.  For 
this  second  volume  Bryant  wrote,  in  prose, 
"  Recollections  of  the  South  of  Spain,"  and  a 
"  Story  of  the  Island  of  Cuba,"  and  also,  with 
Verplanck,  some  "  Reminiscences  of  New  York." 
Here,  as  elsewhere,  we  see  how  crudeness  and 
self-assertion  were  yielding  to  refinement  and 
conscious  strength,  which  indubitably  marked 
these  early  though  essentially  unimportant  writ 
ings  of  Bryant.  His  prose  work,  throughout  life, 
remained  in  relative  obscurity ;  but  his  letters  of 
travel,  orations  commemorative  of  friends  and 
contemporaries  ;  critical  introductions  to  collec 
tions  of  poetry,  of  books,  of  pictures,  or  historical 
narrative  ;  newspaper  editorials,  etc.,  possessed 
the  negative  merit  of  freedom  from  haste  or 
extravagance,  and  the  positive  qualities  of  smooth 
ness,  accuracy,  and  good  sense.  This  well-known 
and  successful  poet,  like  so  many  other  American 
workers  in  various  fields,  never  shirked  the  mis 
cellaneous,  though  ephemeral  and  unimportant, 
duties  resting  upon  authors  who  are  creating  and 
developing  a  new  national  literature.  His  posi 
tion  as  the  literary  and  civic  Nestor  of  New  York 
society,  during  many  years,  rather  increased  the 
number  of  his  transitory  tasks,  and  encroached 
upon  the  already  impaired  time  devoted  to  his 
high  and  original  work.  This,  however,  is  a  per 
sonal,  not  a  literary,  matter;  we  measure  litera 
ture  by  achievement  only,  not  by  causes  or  con 
ditions,  however  they  may  affect  achievement. 


The  Dawn  of  Imagination.  45 

Yet  Bryant's  city  life  and  manifold  duties  never 
injuriously  affected  the  quality  of  his  nature- 
poetry.  Born  in  the  country,  he  was  a  country 
resident  for  a  large  part  of  the  year.  A  poet  of 
observation  and  reflection,  his  records  of  sight 
and  insight  were  most  frequent  when  he  was  sur 
rounded  by  congenial  scenes,  that  is,  in  rural  life. 
Not  a  lyrist,  not  a  poet  of  sentiment,  not  power 
fully  affected  by  reading,  he  was  not  often 
tempted  to  turn  aside  from  his  chosen  woodland 
path.  The  young  Longfellow  began  in  a  similar 
line,  but  was  soon  attracted  by  a  thousand  themes 
of  love,  ambition,  sentiment,  European  romance 
and  culture,  and  American  history  and  tradi 
tion, — as  Bryant  never  was.  All  these  themes 
Bryant  touches,  but  in  his  central  self  he  is  the 
contemplative  interpreter  of  nature,  and  of  the 
procession  of  man  through  the  ages,  environed  by 
the  eternal  hills  and  the  ever  variant  sea.  It  is 
not  strange  that  a  poetic  mind  so  austere,  solemn, 
and  essentially  unchanged  as  Bryant's,  should 
have  served  as  a  model  for  a  few  not  successful 
imitators,  who  could  reproduce  neither  the  man 
nor  his  verse.  Artificial  meditation  in  verse  is 
like  an  artificial  temple,  never  devoted  to  the  ser 
vice  of  the  gods.  Bryant  himself,  on  the  whole, 
measured  his  powers  and  his  limitations  justly, 
gave  us  the  utmost  results  within  his  reach  as 
poet,  and  attained  in  middle  life  his  full  due  of 
praise ;  for,  as  has  been  said,  his  deserts  were 
clearly  perceived  and  amply  rewarded. 

The  place  of  Bryant  in  American  poetry,  then, 


46  American  Literature. 

differs  materially  from  his  place  in  American 
prose.  In  the  former  he  was  a  pioneer  in  fact, 
but  not  in  the  character  or  quality  of  his  work, 
which  was  practically  independent  of  its  time. 
In  the  latter  he  was  a  pioneer  in  every  sense, 
doing  what  he  could  to  further  culture,  learning, 
good  manners,  and  sound  politics  in  a  new  land  ; 
and  employing  powers  always  respectable,  but 
never  commanding,  in  whatsoever  task  might 
present  itself  with  adequate  claim.  Even  in 
prose,  however,  it  is  doubtful  whether  any 
reserved  possibilities  of  higher  achievement, 
under  more  favorable  circumstances,  lay  within 
him. 

To  return  finally  to  his  poetry,  upon  which  his 
ultimate  renown  must  wholly  rest,  we  note  that 
the  principal  qualities  of  that  poetry  did  not 
depend  upon  time-conditions.  The  dawn  of 
American  poetry  attained  its  sunrise-light  in  * 
Bryant  ;  but  his  verse,  if  now  presented  for  the 
B  first  time,  would  probably  achieve 

independent  of      almost  precisely  the  kind  and  amount 

time-conditions.  J 

of  success  it  attained  six  or  seven 
decades  ago.  Its  meritorious  quality  is  essential 
and  not  accidental  or  occasional.  It  is  not  of  the 
greatest,  for  it  is  not  highly  imaginative,  not 
broadly  constructive,  not  enthusiastic  for  liberty, 
not  strikingly  original,  not  beautifully  musical, 
not  bathed  in  the  ever-changing  light  of  the  ideal 
toward  which  the  noblest  poets  yearningly  peer ; 
but  it  is  often  grave,  reverend,  profound,  highly 
helpful.  Save  Emerson,  no  American  poet  so 


The  Dawn  of  Imagination.  47 

often  and  so  well  described  the  Nature  familiar  to 
the  residents  of  the  Eastern  States,  the  Nature 
which  has  been  the  background  of  most  of  our 
literature.  Bryant  might  have  said,  with  Addi- 
son  :  "  Poetic  fields  encompass  me  around  "  ;  and, 
from  them,  in  many  a  verse  and  measure,  he  drew 
the  lesson  of  serene  obedience  to  the  Power 
behind  Nature : 

Be  it  ours  to  meditate, 
In  these  calm  shades,  thy  milder  majesty, 
And  to  the  beautiful  order  of  thy  works 
Learn  to  conform  the  order  of  our  lives. 

In  the  provincial  days  of  our  literature,  a  possi 
ble  Shakespeare  or  Milton  was  thought  to  be 
hidden  in  some  village  poetaster,  while  incipient 
Byrons  and  fully-equipped  Thomsons  were  plenty 
enough.  Born  in  those  early  days,  when  preten 
tious  mediocrity  was  "  hailed "  and  honored, 
Bryant  lived  until  after  the  close  of  the  first  great 
literary  period  of  America,  and  preserved  the 
dignity  and  value  of  his  verse  to  the  end  of  his 
career.  No  American,  as  yet,  has  written  better 
blank  verse,  and  none,  in  hymns  or  other  sober 
lyrics,  has  more  effectually  expressed  his  thought 
in  iambic  tetrameter  four-line  stanzas,  with  alter 
nately  rhyming  lines,  or  rhyming  couplets.  No 
American,  furthermore,  has  made  a  worthier 
contribution  to  the  accumulating  literature  of 
Homeric  translation.  Bryant's  stately  versions 
of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  in  blank  verse, 
have  already  endured  without  detriment  the 


48  American  Literature. 

discussions  and  rivalries  of  twenty  years.  With  a 
part  of  Homer's  genius — his  grandeur — 
Bryant  was  in  fit  and  sympathetic  ac 
cord,  and  his  plainly  straightforward  and 
steadily  dignified  verse  interprets  many  parts  of 
the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  in  a  way  not  inadequate. 
Homer  is  the  great  problem  of  translation  ;  no 
one  reproduces  all  his  qualities.  One  translator 
offers  fire  and  swiftness  at  the  expense  of  stateli- 
ness  ;  another,  stateliness  that  is  stiff  and  pom 
pous,  and  therefore  un-Homeric.  A  regular  and 
strong  rendition  of  Homer's  stories  and  thoughts, 
with  a  part  of  the  Homeric  manner — these  Bryant 
gives  us.  His  version  seems  a  good  one  until  we 
turn  to  the  magnificent  Greek  itself,  when  it  van 
ishes  with  all  other  Homeric  translations.  But 
a  history  of  national  literature  must  not  stop  to 
discuss  renditions  from  other  literatures. 

The  career  of  William  Cullen  Bryant  was  a 
peculiarly  fortunate  one.  To  few  men  does  life 
give  more  of  fulfilled  hope  and  achieved 
Career.8  promise.  In  his  literary  work  he  early 
took  a  just  measure  of  his  powers,  and 
by  the  exercise  of  those  powers  won  a  success 
which,  though  not  the  greatest  or  broadest,  was 
evident  and  long-lasting.  Not  many  bards  could 
so  confidently  say  (if  I  may  reverently  use  the 
quotation)  :  what  I  have  written,  I  have  written. 
Not  many  have  given  us,  so  quietly  and  so 
strongly,  the  best  that  lay  in  their  minds,  leaving 
their  rank  in  literature  to  be  settled  by  inexorable 
Time,  without  distress  or  reckless  ambition  on 


The  Dawn  of  Imagination.  49 

their  own  part.  Bryant  avoided  the  mistakes  of 
over-confidence,  and  yet  did  not  fall  into  the 
weakness  of  undue  literary  conservatism.  This 
honorable  and  excellent  poet,  as  he  looked  for 
ward  without  envy  to  the  brighter  days  of  Ameri 
can  literature,  might  have  given  an  affirmative 
answer  to  the  query  concerning  a  broader  immor 
tality,  with  which  he  closed  his  poem  on  "  The 
Return  of  Youth:" 

Hast  thou  not  glimpses,  in  the  twilight  here, 

Of  mountains  where  immortal  morn  prevails? 
Comes  there  not,  through  the  silence,  to  thine  ear 

A  gentle  rustling  of  the  morning  gales; 
A  murmur,  wafted  from  that  glorious  shore, 

Of  streams  that  water  banks  forever  fair, 
And  voices  of  the  loved  ones  gone  before, 

More  musical  in  that  celestial  air? 


CHAPTER    III. 

HENRY  WADSWORTH   LONGFELLOW. 

FOR  many  years  the  most  representative  name  in  T 
American  poetry  has  been  that  of  Henry  Wads- 
worth  Longfellow.     Others  have  often  rivalled  or 
surpassed  him  in  special  successes, 

Henry  Wadsworth  r 

Longfellow,  or  in   peculiar    fields.     The    poetry 

1807-1882.  r      T7  1-1  I 

of  hmerson  displays  a  clearness 
of  vision,  a  loftiness  of  plan,  an  optimistic 
philosophy,  and  a  profundity  of  thought  to  which 
Longfellow  cannot  wholly  attain  ;  but  it  is  the 
splendid  poetry  of  fragment  and  of  swift  utter 
ance.  Poe's  peculiar  domain  Longfellow  neither  ' 
would  enter  nor  could  enter  with  success.  In 
some  few  respects  Lowell  displays  powers — and 
not  alone  of  wit — more  significant  than  those 
of  his  friend  and  neighbor  and  collegiate  pred- 
icessor.  Such  reflections  as  these,  however, 
Icannot  profitably  be  followed  far.  All  in  all, 
Longfellow  has  been  the  nation's  poet,  and  has 
been  recognized  as  such  in  the  other  great  Teu- 
itonic  countries  as  well  as  in  America.  From  him 
icame  the  only  important  poem  embodying  the 
myths  and  imaginative  life  of  the  Indian  race, — a 
poem  which,  alone  among  all  our  productions, 
shows  something  of  the  epic  spirit,  in  that  it  is  a 
characteristic  verse-story  of  the  hero  of  a  race  and 

50 


Henry    Wadsworth  Longfellow.  51 

time,  whose  deeds  are  affected  by  the  courage  of 
man  and  by  the  supernatural  work  of  the  powers 
above.  From  Longfellow,  too,  came  other  tales 
or  dramas  of  by-gone  American  life  and  scenery, 
in  New  England  or  in  Nova  Scotia.  "  The  Court 
ship  of  Miles  Standish,"  "  Evangeline,"  and  "  The 
New  England  Tragedies"  were  distinctly  local 
products,  while  at  least  one  of  them  possessed 
that  universal  interest  which  is  a  mark  of  true 
literary  achievement.  Longfellow,  more  than  any 
other  American,  made  known  to  a  provincial  peo 
ple  the  wealth  and  the  charm  of  continental  cul 
ture,  and  of  German  romanticism  in  particular. 
He  experimented  so  successfully  with  two  meas 
ures  unfamiliar  in  English — unrhymed  hexameter 
and  unrhymed  trochaic  tetrameter — that  in  their 
use  he  has  virtually  had  neither  rivals  nor  suc 
cessors.  Furthermore,  he  has  been  deemed,  by 
thousands,  preeminently  the  poet  of  sympathy 
and  sentiment,  the  laureate  of  the  common  human 
heart ;  yet  none  has  been  abTe  to~~class  him  with 
the  slender  sentimentalists,  or  to  deny  to  him  the 
possession  of  artistic  powers  of  somewhat  unusual 
range  and  of  unquestionable  effectiveness.  Long 
fellow  has  aroused  affection  on  the  one  hand  and 
stimulated  criticism  on  the  other ;  the  personality 
has  hardly  been  forgotten  in  the  product,  and  yet 
the  work  has  made  no  claims  not  intrinsic.  Like 
Whittier,  Longfellow  is  beloved;  like  Emerson, 
he  is  honored  for  his  poetic  evangel ;  and  like  Poe, 
he  is  studied  as  an  artist  in  words  and  metrical 
effects. 


52  American  Literature. 

His  position  as  leader  of  the  American  choir, 
however,  has  not  been  unquestioned,  and  is  not 
likely  to  escape  sharp  challenge  in  future.  Forty 

The  questioned  years  ag0'  Poe'  with  a11  the  energy 
Leader  of  he  could  exert,  brought  against  the 

American  Song.  t 

greater  part  of  Longfellow  s  shorter 
poems  the  charge  of  prevalent  didacticism,  fol 
lowed  by  the  poet  at  the  expense  of  beauty.  The 
longer  productions  upon  which  his  fame  must 
largely  rest  had  not  then  been  written  ;  but  the 
same  criticism  has  since  been  made  more  than 
once,  in  various  forms,  and  will  continue  to  be 
made.  It  is  sometimes  broadened  to  the  claim 
that  Longfellow's  work  is  good  but  not  great, 
pleasing  but  not  imaginative,  and  hence  of  tempo 
rary  rather  than  ultimate  value. 

The  real  worth  of  Longfellow's  writings  is 
likely  to  be  made  apparent  by  a  frank  abandon 
ment  of  that  which  is  transient  or  faulty.  The 
His  Transient  great  service  which  he  did  to  American 
Work.  culture  and  poetic  thought,  has  been 

fully  stated  in  a  previous  part  of  this  history.* 
We  have  seen  that  he  studied  widely  and  sympa 
thetically,  and  that  he  taught  his  countrymen 
well.  In  two  important  colleges  he  served  as 
instructor  for  many  a  year,  in  that  drudgery 
which  is  so  constantly  brightened  by  the  respon 
sive  work  of  the  more  diligent  or  appreciative  stu 
dents.  Graduates  from  Bowdoin  and  Harvard 
bore  his  message  into  Philistia,  but  Longfellow 
likewise  directly  educated  the  general  public  in 

*  Vol.  I.,  pp.  397-402. 


Henry    Wadsworth  Longfellow.  53 

many  and  sometimes  humble  ways.  He  wrote  or 
edited  text-books  in  French,  Spanish,  and  Italian  ; 
he  prepared  numerous  translations,  long  or  short, 
from  nearly  all  the  Continental  tongues ;  he 
edited  a  huge  anthology  of  European  verses,  and 
compiled  one  or  two  little  books  of  selections 
from  English  bards ;  he  portrayed,  in  gently- 
romantic  essays,  the  life  and  scenes  of  the  Old 
World  of  castles  and  cathedrals,  sunny  France, 
decadent  Spain,  and  Italy  swarming  with  ghosts 
of  past  greatness ;  he  opened  the  oaken  door  to 
the  then  unknown  halls  of  Anglo-Saxon  letters  ; 
and  even  in  his  last  years  he  took  the  trouble  to 
edit  thirty-one  trig  volumes  of  the  "  Poems  of 
Places,"  from  his  native  Maine  to  the  far  islands 
of  Oceanica.  All  this  ephemeral  work — in  which 
I  do  not  include  the  translation  of  the  "  Divine 
Comedy" — was  of  decided  benefit  to  the  country, 
and  far  from  valueless  to  the  doer  himself  ;  but  it 
may  be  dismissed  at  once  as  we  turn  to  the  esti 
mate  of  the  character  and  value  of  Longfellow's 
poetry.  It  helped  to  develop  American  culture, 
but  did  not  greatly  benefit  American  verse. 

Not  much  greater  worth  or  permanence  distin 
guishes  Longfellow's  essays  in  fiction.  During 
all  his  life  he  had  a  certain  fondness  for  excur 
sions  and  experiments.  Only  two  years  after  the 
publication  of  "  Evangeline,"  his  first  successful 
and  widely  popular  poem  of  length,  appeared 
"  Kavanagh,  a  Tale."  The  brief  story  is  pleasing 
throughout;  its  rural  pictures  have  a 
mild  idyllic  grace,  and  its  gentle  humor 
approves  itself  to  the  reader,  who  heartily  accepts 


54  American  Literature. 

its  lesson :  that  purpose  should  be  transmuted 
into  action.  All  that  could  possibly  be  said  in  its 
favor  was  thus  worded  by  Emerson  in  a  letter  to 
its  author  :  "  It  is  good  painting,  and  I  think  it 
the  best  sketch  we  have  seen  in  the  direction  of 
the  American  novel.  One  thing  struck  me  as  I 
read, — that  you  win  our  gratitude  too  easily ;  for 
after  our  much  experience  of  the  squalor  of  New 
Hampshire  and  the  pallor  of  Unitarianism,  we  are 
so  charmed  with  elegance  in  an  American  book 
that  we  could  forgive  more  vices  than  are  possible 
to  you."  The  same  friendly  critic  also  said  that 
he  read  the  book  "  with  great  contentment,"  and 
found  that  "  it  had,  with  all  its  gifts  and  graces, 
the  property  of  persuasion,  and  of  inducing  the 
serene  mood  it  required."  But  it  soon  joined  the 
great  company  of  sketches  toward  the  American 
Novel.  This  amiable  story  is  respectably  in 
cluded  in  the  complete  prose-works  of  its  author, 
of  whom  it  was  not  unworthy,  but  whose  rep 
utation  it  never  enhanced.  Produced  when 
Longfellow  was  forty-two,  in  length  and  merit  it 
fairly  equals  Hawthorne's  "  Fanshawe,"  published 
when  Hawthorne  was  twenty-four.  "  Kavanagh  " 
leaves  upon  the  mind  an  impression  of  limitation 
rather  than  of  imperfection,  but  its  minor  graces 
are  all  it  can  boast. 

"  Hyperion,  a  Romance "  is  decidedly  more 
important  than  "  Kavanagh,"  which  it  antedated 
"Hyperion,  DY  ten  years.  It  is  longer,  its  imagina- 
a  Romance."  tjve  element  {$  broader  and  more  con 
spicuous,  its  creative  power  is  higher,  its  style  is 
superior,  and  it  is  of  significance  for  the  light 


Henry    Wadsworth  Longfellow.  55 

which  it  throws  upon  the  author's  mind,  and  upon 
the  romantic  movement  of  the  time,  which  Long 
fellow  was  turning  from  Germany  to  the  United 
States,  then  in  the  sweet  enjoyment  of  a  period 
of  musky  sentimentalism.  The  autobiographical 
element  in  "  Hyperion  "  is  unmistakable,  though 
not  to  be  hunted  into  its  fastnesses.  We  have 
in  these  pages  the  record  of  some  of  the  foreign 
travels,  experiences,  and  musings  of  a  thoughtful 
mind,  touched  with  the  gentle  but  irresistible 
lessons  of  an  old  land  of  romance  and  tender  pas 
sion.  The  view  of  life  here  presented  is  optimis 
tic,  yet  overhung  with  a  purple  melancholy,  and 
affected  by  that  feeling  of  sadness,  not  akin  to 
pain,  of  which  Longfellow  elsewhere  sings  in  a 
well-known  poem.  We  have  in  this  world — the 
book  seems  to  remind  us — the  lessons  of  the  past, 
the  wealth  of  the  present,  and  the  hope  of  the 
future.  Life  is  a  rich  possession,  in  which  joy 
and  pathos  are  fitly  blent,  and  in  which  pure  love 
sanctifies  manly  duty.  "  Hyperion  "  bore  to  the 
American  public  a  needed  message  at  the  proper 
time.  The  sentimentality  of  many  readers  was 
then  both  sickly  and  silly,  but  Longfellow  gave 
them  a  romance  sufficiently  meditative  and  unreal 
istic  to  be  satisfactory  at  that  weak  period,  and 
yet  so  true  and  so  brave  that  it  spoke  of  aspi 
ration  as  well  as  of  reflection  and  "  feeling." 
"  Hyperion  "  was  intelligible  to  the  feebler  minds 
of  the  day,  and  yet  not  unwelcome  to  the 
stronger.  It  was  "  Wilhelm  Meister"  wholly 
restated  and  fitted  for  a  Saxon  audience  in 


56  American  Literature. 

America.  With  the  freshness  of  a  young  heart, 
beating  more  quickly  in  the  presence  of  the 
glories  of  an  Old  World  still  comparatively  unfa 
miliar,  the  Paul  Flemming  of  "  Hyperion  "  taught 
many  a  sympathetic  soul  to  heed  the  lesson  of  the 
quaint  mortuary  inscription  which  forms  the 
motto  of  the  book  :  "  Look  not  mournfully  into 
the  Past.  It  comes  not  back  again.  Wisely  im 
prove  the  Present.  It  is  thine.  Go  forth  to 
meet  the  shadowy  Future,  without  fear,  and  with 
a  manly  heart."  This  agreeable  love-tale,  with  its 
pleasant  English  and  its  poetic  pictures  of  life  and 
landscape,  will  be  enveloped  in  increasing  shad 
ows,  cast  not  only  by  the  fame  of  other  and 
greater  romancers  than  Longfellow,  but  by  the 
poetical  works  of  the  author  himself ;  yet  the  fu 
ture  will  hardly  deny  that  it  has  merit  intrinsic 
as  well  as  temporary  and  personal.  "  Hyperion  " 
seems  to  belong  to  a  past  period  in  American 
literature  ;  but  the  books  of  Richter  himself  are 
now  comparatively  unread  in  Germany,  which  at 
the  moment  prefers  to  put  its  sentiment  and  emo 
tion  into  the  form  of  historical  fiction  rather  than 
contemporary  romance.  The  soul  and  its  long 
ings  are  eternal,  but  modes  of  expression  vary 
with  the  changing  years. 

The  poetic  career  of  Longfellow  may  now,  if 
we  turn  back  to  its  beginning,  be  traced  without 
interruption.  With  all  its  breadth  of  thought  and 
variation  of  art,  it  was  a  symmetrical  career,  fitly 
related  to  the  character  of  the  man  and  to  the 
times  in  which  he  lived. 


Henry    Wadsworth  Longfellow.  57 

In  1825  Longfellow  left  Brunswick,  a  graduate 
of  Bowdoin  College,  eighteen  years  of  age.  The 
next  year  was  published  in  Boston  a  Longfellow's 
neat  volume  of  "  Miscellaneous  Poems  Early  Poems- 
selected  from  the  United  States  Literary  Gazette." 
Fourteen  bear  the  name  of  Longfellow,  and  are 
printed  in  the  following  order,  here  and  there 
in  the  book:  "  Dirge  Over  a  Nameless  Grave"; 
"Thanksgiving";  "Sunrise  On  the  Hills"; 
"Hymn  of  the  Moravian  Nuns";  "The  Indian 
Hunter";  "The  Angler's  Song";  "An  April 
Day  "  ;  "  Autumn  "  ;  "  Autumnal  Nightfall  " 
"Woods  in  Winter";  "A  Song  of  Savoy" 
'<  Italian  Scenery";  "  The  Venetian  Gondolier" 
"  The  Sea  Diver."  Most  of  these  were  not 
included  by  the  author  in  the  collected  editions  of 
his  poems,  but  some  have  been  well  and  widely 
known  since  their  first  appearance.  None  at 
tained,  or  was  to  attain,  the  honorable  position 
awarded  to  Bryant's  "  Thanatopsis,"  but  all 
together,  with  certain  obvious  faults  of  juvenility 
and  imitatlveness,  displayed  not  only  precocity 
but  a  distinct,  if  rudimentary,  character  and  a 
manifest  and  efficiently  deliberate  method  of  lit 
erary  expression.  The  young  Longfellow,  it  was 
already  apparent,  was  to  be  a  discreet  poetic 
leader,  in  his  day  and  way,  and  also  a  sharer  of 
the  contemporary  time-influence  in  new  America. 
His  verse  shows  nature  affecting  thought,  thought 
purifying  feeling,  and  feeling  rising  into  aspiration 
and  action.  When  we  call  Longfellow  "  the  poet  \  / 
of  sympathy,"  as  we  rightly  may,  we  should  not 


58  American  Literature. 

forget  this  rising  gamut  in  his  verse.  The  old 
term  "  sensibility,"  as  used  in  "  Sir  Charles 
Grandison'"  and  other  books  of  an  elder  day,  may 
not  inaptly  describe  a  potent  cause  of  Long 
fellow's  charm  and  success.  He  was  always  an  \ 
artist  of  the  beautiful ;  but  the  beautiful,  in  his 
dictionary,  was  largely  synonymous  with  the  true  ( 
and  good.  "  The  heart  is  the  life,"  and  our 
national  heart-singer  is  Longfellow.  His  poetic 
blood  does  not  surge  with  passion,  nor  ebb  with 
horror  ;  but  it  beats  firm  and  true. 

I  have  spoken  already,  and  more  than  once, 
of  Longfellow's  wise  service  in  broadening  our 
American  culture  in  many  ways,  and  of  his  agree- x 
able  union  of  sentiment  and  sense  in  prose  fiction. 
His  verse  was  more  important  than  his  prose,  and 
in  it,  from  the  first,  appear  the  same  qualities. 
Had  imagination  and  creative  power  been  lacking* 
in  him — as  most  certainly  they  were  not — mere 
discretion  or  wise  didacticism  would  have  been 
Causes  of  humble  poetic  helpers  ;  but  when  added 
Longfellow's  to  a  real,  however  limited,  creative  gen- 

Popularity.         .  /  .  .        '  * 

ius,  their  service  was  invaluable.  1  he 
genial  circumstances  of  his  life — broken  only  by 
inevitable  death  and  by  one  swift  tragedy — were 
largely  the  result  of  his  own  kindly  and  beneficent 
nature,  which  never  ceased  to  affect  his  writings 
and  his  fame.  Thus  we  explain  the  instant  yet 
lasting  recognition  of  the  merits  of  the  collection 
called  "The  Voices  of  the  Night,"  the  poet's  first 
original  volume,  issued  in  1839.  Besides  some 
of  the  earlier  Literary  Gazette  pieces,  and  many 


Henry    Wadsworth  Longfellow.  59 

translations,  here  were  but  eight  new  poems  and  a 
prelude  ;  but  every  one  of  these  eight  poems  may 
fairly  be  said  to  have  to-day  a  national  and  almost    ^NIA 
an  international  reputation.     The  "  Hymn  to  the 
Night,"  "A   Psalm  of   Life,"    "  The   Reaper  and 
the  Flowers,"  "The  Light  of  Stars,"  "  Footsteps  \ 
of  Angels,"  "Flowers,"  "The  Beleaguered  City," 
the  "Midnight  Mass  for  the  Dying  Year" — every 
body  knows  them  all.     Mere  popularity  is  but  a 
poor  test  of  value  in   art,   but  the  popularity  of 
poems  showing  good  artistic  quality  is  not  lightly 
to   be   set   aside.     Criticism  is   but   the  record  OlfjK 
intelligent  opinion,  and  he  would  be  a  bold  critic 
who  should  aver  that  the  favor  bestowed   upon 
Longfellow  is  chiefly  unintelligent.      In  fact,  his 
American  favor  has  from  the  first  been  given  by 
the  higher  and  middle  classes,  in  greatest  meas 
ure.     Those    who    are    interested    in    the    cheap 
jingles  of  the  comic  opera   or  the  popular  senti 
mental    parlor-ballads  of   war   or   home,    are    not 
affected  by  Longfellow  as  much  as  by  the  author 
of    "  Beautiful    Snow."     The    common    heart    re 
sponds  to  many  things  in  Shakespeare,  in  Words 
worth,  in  Emerson,  as  it  responds  to  the  "  Psalm 
of  Life,"  or  "The   Reaper  and  the  Flowers,"  or 
"  Resignation."     Few  poets  have  sung  its  hopes  \ 
and   regrets   so  well   as    Longfellow ;  but  his   re 
nown  is  based,  after  all,  upon  a  general    accept 
ance  of   good   work,    and    not    upon    any  of   the 
tricks     adopted     by     the     poetical     demagogue. 
Mere  recognition  by  the  masses  of  readers,  how 
ever  numerous,  is  inevitably  a  temporary  thing  ; 


60  American  Literature. 

and  we  have  already  long  passed  the  period  when 
it  was  possible  to  suspect  that  Longfellow  was  the 
laureate  of  emotional  unintelligence  or  sentimen 
tal  mediocrity.  His  broad  fame  is  a  credit  and 
not  a  discredit  to  the  nature  of  his  genius  and  the 
form  of  his  verse.  Eliminate  from  Longfellow's 
poems  all  that  he  owed  to  Heine  and  Germany, 
to  Dante  and  Italy,  to  the  French  singers  of  the 
sunshine,  and  to  the  Scandinavian  scalds  of  the 
sea ;  eliminate  all  that  is  ephemeral  on  the  one 
hand  or  unduly  sermonic  on  the  other,  and  there 
still  remains  enough  that  is  true  poetry  and  mere 
poetry.  When  we  read  a  volume  of  Longfellow 
we  do  not  feel  simply  that  we  have  been  preached 
at,  or  furnished  with  a  code  of  blue-laws,  or  made 
to  memorize  the  Ten  Commandments,  or  sign  the 
total-abstinence  pledge.  I  grant  that  the  effect 
upon  our  minds  is  one  of  tranquillity,  reverence, 
sympathy,  optimism  ;  but  I  am  not  yet  ready  to 
admit  that  these  things  are  to  be  banished  from 
literature,  or  that  they  form  a  blemish  on  the  face 
of  the  literary  product.  If  blemish  they  are, 
our  definition  of  literature,  as  Milton  and  Dante, 
Wordsworth  and  Emerson  knew  it,  must  wholly 
be  revised.  Tranquillity,  reverence,  world-sym 
pathy,  and  optimism  are  precisely  the  qualities  of 
Emerson  the  poet,  and  though  there  was  in  Long 
fellow  a  gentle  melancholy  utterly  unknown  to 
Emerson's  joyful  trust  in  the  existing  order  of  the 
universe,  both  reached  a  similar  end  by  different 
means.  If  Longfellow  was  but  a  poet  of  genial 
twaddle  and  mild  morality,  and  if  therefore  he  is 


Henry    Wadsworth  Longfellow.  61 

to  fall  in  the  days  of  materialism  and  soulless  art, 
then  he  will  not  fall  alone.  Twaddle  and  insipid 
ity  are  not  hard  to  find  in  his  voluminous  versify- 
ings,  but  they  are  very  easily  eliminated. 

In  reading  the  lyrics  of  Longfellow,  produced 
in  the  long  period  between  his  college  days  and 
the  year  of  his  death,  one  is  reminded  of  the  dif 
ference  between  the  typical  short  poem  of  our 
time  and  those  of  earlier  days  in  English  Longfellow 
literature.  Longfellow's  lyrics,  aside  asaLynst- 
from  the  question  of  genius,  are  radically  unlike 
Shakespeare's  songs,  fresh  with  the  breath  of 
Nature  herself ;  the  dainty  love-poems  and  the 
conceits  of  "  compliment  and  courtship"  which 
came  from  Herrick  and  Suckling ;  the  stately  or 
classically  fanciful  odes  of  Milton  ;  Dryden's 
successful  experiments  for  St.  Cecilia's  day ;  or 
Gray's  verse,  which  so  curiously  united  the  con 
ventional  and  the  original.  The  nineteenth- 
century  short  poem,  if  it  would  rise  to  favor,  must 
either  be  merely  and  highly  beautiful,  or  touched 
with  some  power  of  description,  suggestion,  or 
feeling  which  shall  approve  itself  to  the  critic's 
head  and  to  the  reader's  heart.  Upon  the  latter 
quality  most  nineteenth-century  readers  are  likely 
to  insist/.  In  the  first  respect  Longfellow  seldom 
triumphs ;  in  the  second  he  often  succeeds.  In 
tense  clear  beauty  is  not  to  be  found  in  "  The 
Rainy  Day,"  "A  Gleam  of  Sunshine,"  "The 
Reaper  and  the  Flowers,"  "Resignation,"  or  "A 
Psalm  of  Life."  The  last-named  poem,  perhaps 
the  best  loved  of  all,  is  perilously  near  to  insipid  I 


62  American  Literature. 

failure.  Mere  prosy  flatness  often  encounters 
us  in  Longfellow's  poems,  and  here  it  is  rein 
forced  by  rugged  sing-song  versification.  But 
elsewhere,  as  in  "The  Day  is  Done,"  Longfellow 
shows  his  power  to  express  high  thought  in 
exquisite  verse.  That  he  did  not  oftener  produce 
work  purely  lovely  in  form  as  well  as  in  thought 
was  surely  his  own  fault.  It  hardly  seems  that 
"A  Psalm  of  Life"  and  "The  Day  is  Done" 
could  come  from  the  same  hand : 

"The  day  is  done,  and  the  darkness 

Falls  from  the  wings  of  Night, 
As  a  feather  is  wafted  downward 
From  an  eagle  in  his  flight ;  " 

this  is  melody,  the  melody  of  the  author  of  "  Hia 
watha,"  and  of  him  who  wrote  such  lines  as 

"When  she  had  passed,  it  seemed  like  the  ceasing  of 
exquisite  music ; " 

"The  leaves  of  memory  seemed  to  make 
A  mournful  rustling  in  the  dark ;  " 

"I  turn  and  set  my  back  against  the  wall, 
And  look  thee  in  the  face,  triumphant  Death ; " 

"  It  came  from  the  heaving  breast  of  the  deep  ; 
Silent  as  dreams  are,  and  sudden  as  sleep." 

We   look  to  the  poet  for  an   apt    and  artistic 
expression  of  that  which  we  have  vaguely  thought 
.   but  cannot  fitly  frame  nor  utter  as  we 

The  Poet's  Soul  ' 

and  the  Poet's     would.     Shakespeare    is    the    world  s 

genius  because  he  phrases,  better  than 

any  other  poet,  the  world's  thought.      He  is  not 


Henry    Wadsworth  Longfellow.  63 

the  poet  of  aristocracy,  or  the  middle  classes,  or 
the  "  masses."  When  a  singer  undertakes  to  voice 
the  soul  of  a  subdivision  of  humanity  he  meets 
the  fate  of  the  Reverend  Mr.  Dickinson,  who 
thought  it  necessary  to  translate  the  New  Tes 
tament  into  really  refined  English ;  or  of  Walt 
Whitman.  Burns  was  not  Burns  because  he  was 
a  peasant,  nor  was  Emerson  Emerson  because  he 
was  a  university  lecturer  on  philosophy  and  the 
head  of  the  Concord  school.  The  universal,  and 
not  the  local  or  the  social,  gave  them  their  place. 
So  it  is  in  the  case  of  the  poetry  of  Longfellow,  ! 
or  any  other  favored  singer.  Had  he  deliberately 
undertaken  to  be  an  artist  in  verse,  or  an  artificial 
workingman,  or  the  representative  of  America  or 
the  tl  middle  classes,"  whose  laureate  and  vates 
some  have  called  him,  critics  and  readers  would 
not  be  taking  the  trouble  to  discuss  his  works. 
He  believed  that  he  had  a  song  to  sing;  and 
though  he  sang  it  with  his  own  tone,  and  senti 
ment,  and  native  feeling,  and  culture,  and  time- 
spirit,  it  was  a  song  not  designed  specially  for' 
Portland  or  Cambridge,  but  for  humanity.  Our 
New-World  academic  singer  was  quite  willing  to 
leave  to  an  Oxford  professor  the  congenial  task 
of  chanting  for  cultured  pessimists  the  charms  of 
spiritual  vacuity,  in  poetry  so  exquisite  that  it 
would  have  been  Greek  save  for  the  fact  that  to 
the  Greek  mind  it  seemed  necessary  that  manly 
thought  and  serene  strength  should  accompany 
the  meditative  mood. 

Longfellow  wrote  for  humanity,  and  humanity   \ 


64  American  Literature. 

recognized  its  own  hopes  and  feelings  in  the  plain 
aphoristic  patience  and  cheer  of  "A  Psalm  of 
Life " ;  the  responsive,  recognizing  love  of  "  En- 
dymion  "  ;  the  manly  endurance  of  "  The  Light  of 
Stars";  the  tender  and  melancholy  musing  of 
"  The  Day  is  Done";  the  affectionate  commemor 
ation  of  the  departed  in  "  Resignation  "  ;  and  the 
ceaseless  aspiration  of  "Excelsior"  and  "The 
Ladder  of  St.  Augustine."  The  simple  and  lovely 
Christian  code  of  action,  from  patience  and  self- 
Poetr  and  sacrifice  up  to  an  ultimate  heaven  and 
the  Religious  the  fulness  of  joy,  is  phrased  gently 

Sentiment.  ,  ,.  ,         •      „ 

and  strongly,  but  not  too  didactically, 
by  this  singer  who  looked  into  his  heart  and 
wrote,  that  he  might  make  his  life  and  many  a 
life  sublime,  though  he  must  wait  as  well  as  labor. 
Sublimity  so  great  as  to  overshadow  Death  itself, 
he  told  us,  lay  in  the  power  to  suffer  and  be 
strong.  The  heights  of  eternity,  as  well  as  of  life, 
are  attained  by  "toiling  upward  in  the  night"; 
for  though 

"  The  air  is  full  of  farewells  to  the  dying, 
And  mournings  for  the  dead," 

it  is  not  less  true  that 

"  There  is  no  Death !     What  seems  so  is  transition ; 

This  life  of  mortal  breath 
Is  but  a  suburb  of  the  life  elysian 
Whose  portal  we  call  death." 

Bayard   Taylor,    who   certainly   was   neither   a 
bigot  nor  a  platitudinarian,  once  wrote  to  Long- 


Henry    Wadsworth  Longfellow.  65 

fellow :  "  I  know  not  who  else  before  you  has  so 
wonderfully  wedded  Poetry  and  the  Religious  Sen 
timent."  *  I  cannot  agree  with  Taylor  in  his  high 
praise  of  "  The  Divine  Tragedy,"  nor  in  his  favor 
able  comparison  between  Longfellow  and  Milton  ; 
but  his  remark,  as  generally  applicable  to  a  large 
part  of  Longfellow's  work,  is  both  apt  and  just. 
Once  when  Lowell  had  become  discouraged  over 
the  task  of  preparing  a  new  edition  of  his  own 
verse,  he  happened  to  take  up  a  similar  edition  of 
Longfellow,  "  to  see  the  type."  "  Before  I  knew 
it,"  he  wrote  to  the  elder  poet,  "  I  had  been  read 
ing  two  hours  and  more.  I  never  wondered  at 
your  popularity,  nor  thought  it  wicked  in  you ;  but 
if  I  had  wondered,  I  should  no  longer,  for  you 
sang  me  out  of  all  my  worries."  f  Longfellow 
sang  poets,  as  well  as  seamstresses  and  shopkeep 
ers,  out  of  all  their  worries ;  and  the  simple  reason 
was  that  his  heart  was  human  and  his  art  was 
poetic. 

As  we  turn  the  pages  of  Longfellows  successive 
volumes  of  minor  verse—-  Ballads  Longfeiiow's 

and  other  Poems,"  "  Poems  on  successive  volumes 
Slavery,"  "The  Belfry  of  Bruges 
and  Other  Poems,"  "The  Seaside  and  the  Fire 
side,"  " Flower-de-Luce,"  "Three  Books  of  Song," 
"Aftermath,"  "The  Masque  of  Pandora  and 
Other  Poems,"  "  Keramos  and  Other  Poems," 
"Ultima  Thule,"  and  "In  The  Harbor"  (posthu- 

*  "  Final  Memorials  of  Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow,"  edited  by  Samuel 
Longfellow;  174. 

t  "  Final  Memorials  of  Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow,"  246,  note. 
5 


66  American  Literature. 

mously  published) — we  note  a  gradual  diminution 
of  the  number  of  highly  popular  and  universally 
accepted  lyrics.  Most  readers  cared  compara 
tively,  little,  I  fear,  even  for  the  longer  books  of 
his  later  life,  to  which  I  shall  recur.  "  The  New 
England  Tragedies,"  "The  Divine  Tragedy," 
"Judas  Maccabseus,"  and  "Michael  Angelo," 
upon  which  the  author  worked  laboriously  and 
affectionately,  were  given  a  reception  which  was 
perhaps  respectful,  but  no  more.  Only  "  The 
Hanging  of  the  Crane  "  and  the  noble  "  Morituri 
Salutamus "  aroused  anything  like  enthusiasm. 
Enthusiasm  is  not  the  safest  of  critical  guides,  but 
in  regard  to  Longfellow's  work  it  was  somewhat 
in  accord  with  the  calm  verdict  of  criticism,  which 
bestows  no  high  approval  upon  most  of  the  writ 
ings  just  mentioned.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is 
in  Longfellow's  later  product  an  increased  power 
of  description  of  scenery  and  action,  and  a  mul 
tiplication  of  not  unpleasing  dramatic  or  semi- 
dramatic  pictures.  Sonnets  are  also  numerous, 
and  the  utterance  of  personal  reflection  is  preva 
lent.  The  author's  intellectual  and  poetical 
powers  had  not  declined,  though  his  old  age  was 
less  successful  than  his  middle-life  in  its  fresh 
experiments  in  verse  and  theme.  He  had  written 
his  credo  and  uttered  his  "seven  voices  of  sympa 
thy  " ;  and  there  was  neither  need  nor  wish  to 
repeat  them.  Had  he  endeavored  to  do  so,  and 
had  he  chosen  subjects  and  methods  similar  to 
those  of  his  earlier  famous  lyrics  and  meditative 


Henry    Wadswortk  Longfellow.  67 

poems,  he  would  have  encountered  criticism  severer 
than  that  which  met  his  later  books.  Emerson's 
suggestion  that  Longfellow  " wrote  too  much" 
concerned  the  number,  and  not  the  character,  of 
his  last  poems.  They  were  not  echoes  of  an 
earlier  day.  The  bitterest,  or  at  any  rate  the  most 
unpleasant,  criticism  is  that  which  states  that  an 
author  has  outlived  his  powers  and  can  but  try  to 
repeat  old  tunes  and  tricks.  Such  criticism  could 
never  be  applied  to  Longfellow.  It  is  true  that 
in  all  Longfellow's  minor  verse  after  the  "  Flower- 
de-Luce "  volume  of  1866  I  find  none  that  can 
fairly  be  awarded  the  general  honors  bestowed 
upon  the  old  favorites,  save  "  The  Chamber  Over 
the  Gate,"  "  Robert  Burns,"  "  The  Sifting  of 
Peter,"  and  the  sonnet  on  President  Garfield. 
Admitting  this  very  fully  and  frankly,  the  facts 
remain  that  Longfellow's  previous  work  was  done 
and  well  done  ;  that  he  was  too  wise  to  try  to  step 
in  the  old  footprints  ;  that  his  later  writing  was 
marked  by  some  successes  of  its  own  ;  and  that, 
in  artistic  finish,  the  numerous  sonnets  produced 
in  the  last  twenty  years  of  his  life  not  only 
equalled  anything  he  had  previously  writ- 

.f  .  .  .        /  .    Sonnets. 

ten  but  very  easily  put  him  at  the  head  of 
all  American  sonneteers.  The  very  soul  and  the 
true  body  of  a  sonnet  are  found  in  the  two  that 
follow,  which,  it  should  be  added,  are  nowise 
superior  to  the  noble  series  accompanying  his 
translation  of  the  "Divine  Comedy"  : 


68  American  Literature. 


MY  BOOKS. 

Sadly  as  some  old  mediaeval  knight 

Gazed  at  the  arms  he  could  no  longer  wield, 
The  sword  two-handed  and  the  shining  shield 

Suspended  in  the  hall,  and  full  in  sight, 

While  secret  longings  for  the  lost  delight 
Of  tourney  or  adventure  in  the  field 
Came  over  him,  and  tears  but  half  concealed 

Trembled  and  fell  upon  his  beard  of  white, 

So  I  behold  these  books  upon  their  shelf, 
My  ornaments  and  arms  of  other  days ; 

Not  wholly  useless,  though  no  longer  used, 

For  they  remind  me  of  my  other  self, 

Younger  and  stronger,  and  the  pleasant  ways 

In  which  I  walked,  now  clouded  and  confused. 

VICTOR  AND   VANQUISHED. 

As  one  who  long  hath  fled  with  panting  breath 

Before  his  foe,  bleeding  and  near  to  fall, 

I  turn  and  set  my  back  against  the  wall, 
And  look  thee  in  the  face,  triumphant  Death. 
I  call  for  aid,  and  no  one  answereth ; 

I  am  alone  with  thee,  who  conquerest  all ; 

Yet  me  thy  threatening  form  doth  not  appal, 
For  thou  art  but  a  phantom  and  a  wraith. 

Wounded  and  weak,  sword  broken  at  the  hilt, 
With  armor  shattered,  and  without  a  shield, 

I  stand  unmoved ;  do  with  me  what  thou  wilt ; 
I  can  resist  no  more,  but  will  not  yield. 

This  is  no  tournament  where  cowards  tilt ; 
The  vanquished  here  is  victor  of  the  field. 

The  latter  of  these  was  written  in  Longfellow's 
seventieth  year,  and  the  former  in  his  seventy- 
fifth.  I  do  not  see  why,  according  to  the  best 
Italian  and  English  models,  the  death-sonnet  can- 


Henry    Wadsworth  Longfellow.  69 

not  fairly  be  called  perfect.  He  would  be  an  able 
critic,  or  a  great  sonneteer,  who  could  suggest  an 
improvement  in  it. 

It  is  time,  in  this  survey  of  the  poet's  work,  to 
turn  to  his  longer,  more  ambitious,  and  more 
important  books  of  verse,  after  examining  which 
we  shall  be  able  to  view  more  fully  the  literary 
attainment  of  his  lifetime. 

Late  in  life  Longfellow  jotted  in  his  diary : 
"Our  opinions  are  biassed  by  our  limitations. 
Poets  who  cannot  write  long  poems  think  that  no 
long  poems  should  be  written."  He  must  have 
been  thinking  of  one  of  Poe's  most  foolish  say 
ings,  which  needs  no  more  respectful  refutation 
than  this.  Longfellow  could  successfully  write 
both  short  poems  and  long.  Excellent,  numerous, 
and  widely  popular  as  are  his  lyrics  of  the  heart, 
they  are  scarcely  more  praiseworthy  or  more 
widely  current  than  his  two  best  poems  of  length, 
"Hiawatha"  and  "  Evangeline."  In  middle  life 
Longfellow  found  a  new  and  notable  fame  await 
ing  him  because  of  these  well-known  productions, 
the  spirit  and  form  of  which  became  as  familiar 
as  those  of  "The  Rainy  Day"  or  "Excelsior." 
They  are  indissolubly  connected  with  his  life- 
work  and  fame,  and  their  qualities  and  individual 
characteristics  are  Longfellow's,  and  are  not 
shared,  for  the  most  part,  by  other  books  of  their 
time. 

The  first  of  Longfellow's  longer,  and  in  that 
sense  more  ambitious,  poems  was  "  The  Spanish 
Student,"  published  in  Cambridge  in  1843.  This 


jo  American  Literature. 

three-act  play  is  a  pretty  little  affair,  no  more.  It 
"The  Spanish  mav  be  read  without  difficulty,  and 
student."  with  that  pleasure  which  accompanies 
the  sense  that  a  neat  plan  has  been  agreeably 
carried  out.  Its  Spanish  scenes  and  story  formed 
a  part  of  the  equipment  of  gentle  romance  which 
Longfellow  got  in  Europe  and  so  fully  shared 
with  his  countrymen.  Few  indeed  have  been  the 
meritorious  plays  written  in  English  during  the 
present  century,  measured  even  by  the  literary  or 
library  criterion.  Still  fewer  have  been  the  suc 
cessful  acted  dramas  produced  by  authors  of  the 
first  contemporary  rank.  Longfellow's  dramatic 
compositions,  notwithstanding  some  manifest 
merits — cheery  grace  in  "  The  Spanish  Student  " 
and  the  sublimity  of  rapt  paraphrase  in  "  The 
Divine  Tragedy "  —fell  below  the  best  of  his 
other  work.  No  other  American  poet  of  promi 
nence  ever  completed  a  dramatic  essay,  so  that 
Longfellow's  relative  failure  is  not  heightened  by 
any  comparison  with  a  fellow-worker's  success. 

When  "Evangeline"  appeared,  in  1847,  Long 
fellow  was  already  the  most  widely  known  of  our 
,  Poets-  Emerson's  first  collection  of 
P°ems  was  printed  that  year,  but  it  was 
long  before  he  could  be  said  to  enjoy 
any  wide  renown.  Poe's  volumes  and  single  suc 
cesses  were  already  familiar,  but  the  general  con 
sent  assigned  to  him  a  place  much  below  that  of 
the  singer  whom  he  so  unjustly  attacked.  Had 
there  been  any  doubt  as  to  Longfellow's  primacy, 
it  was  removed  by  the  instant  fame  of  this  widely 


Henry    Wadsworth  Longfellow.  71 

discussed  and  oft-read  book.  The  theme,  at  once 
idyllic  and  tragical,  and  the  much-debated  meas 
ure  (unrhymed  hexameter)  were  alike  attractive. 
Many  to  whom  poetry  was  unfamiliar  became 
interested  in  the  sad  lives  and  loves  of  the  ban 
ished  Acadian  girl  and  her  lost  betrothed,  who 
met  at  last  as  tender,  helpful  nun  and  dying 
stranger.  While  the  critics  and  rhymesters  were 
discussing  the  metre,  thousands  of  readers  were 
sharing  the  sentiments  of  Doctor  Holmes,  who 
wrote  to  the  poet :  "  The  story  is  beautiful  in 
conception  as  in  execution.  I  read  it  as  I  should 
have  listened  to  some  exquisite  symphony,  and 
closed  the  last  leaf,  leaving  a  little  mark  upon  it 
which  told  a  great  deal  more  than  all  the  ink 
I  could  waste  upon  the  note  you  have  just 
finished.'* 

"  Tell  me  a  story  "  has  been  the  request  made 
of  singers  and  makers  of  prose  fiction  for  many  a 
century.  "  Evangeline  "  told  a  story  with  simple 
grace  and  quiet  art,  and  with  that  human  sym 
pathy  which  pulses  through  nearly  all  that  Long 
fellow  ever  wrote.  A  new-world  theme,  taken 
from  an  unfamiliar  coast  or  from  the  wild  interior, 
gave  the  poem  an  originality  of  plot  which  fitly 
accompanied  its  unfamiliar  metre.  There  was  in 
it  enough  of  freshness  to  separate  it  from  the 
well-known  productions  of  its  author,  whose  qual 
ities  of  mind  and  soul  it  however  reflected  suffi 
ciently  clearly.  He  had  been  deeply  and  con 
stantly  indebted  to  Europe  for  poetic  theme  and 
color ;  but  here  he  essayed  a  long  poem  of  strictly 


72  American  Literature. 

American  tone.  The  experiment,  discreetly  made, 
was  a  wise  one.  The  story  was  one  suited  to  his 
mind,  and  his  previous  metrical  experiments  and 
obvious  artistic  powers,  enabled  him  to  give  it 
a  proper  setting.  Bold  and  high  imagination,  a  V 
soaring  genius,  were  not  his ;  but  the  imagina 
tion  which  is  tender,  sweet,  and  human  was  never 
far  away  from  his  hand.  Therefore  in  "  Evange- 
line"  are  shown,  at  large,  the  patient  endurance 
and  gentle  love  of  which  he  had  so  often  sung  in 
lyrics.  Here,  too,  Longfellow's  habitual  diffuse- 
ness  almost  ceased  to  be  a  blemish,  for  diffuse- 
ness  is  so  essential  a  part  of  the  English  hexam 
eter — alas,  how  different  from  the  Greek  ! — that 
in  Longfellow  and  Clough  we  scarcely  stop  to 
note  it.  The  body  and  soul  of  the  poem  "  Evan- 
geline"  offer  no  discordant  impression  to  the 
reader's  mind. 

The  English  novel,  at  its  best,  has  told  the 
story  of  the  love  and  life  of  typical  men  and 
The  story  and  women  of  the  English  people,  seen 
ackground.  against  a  nationai  background.  Eng 
lish  narrative  and  idyllic  verse,  from  "  The  Canter 
bury  Tales"  to  "  Enoch  Arden,"  has  followed  the 
same  broad  general  plan  as  that  of  "  The  Vicar  of 
Wakefield,"  the  masterpiece  of  English  fiction.x 
Thus  in  "  Evangeline,"  a  love-romance  in  verse, 
and  also  a  poem  of  idyllic  description,  the  charac 
ters  and  scenes  are  of  the  western  world,  but  the 
love  and  the  pathos,  like  those  of  all  great  works 
of  the  sort,  belong  to  universal  humanity.  The 
apt  literary  artist  uses  enough  local  color  to  give 


Henry    Wadsworth  Longfellow.  73 

his  work  a  character  of  its  own,  and  yet  employs 
the  large  manner  that  appeals  to  a  catholic  audi 
ence.  A  woman's  heart  bereft  of  its  lover's  heart, 
and  resting  not  till  the  two  are  reunited — "  all  the 
world  loves  a  lover,"  and  a  goodly  part  of  the 
world  accordingly  loves  Evangeline  and  shares  her 
sorrows.  Her  people  are  quaint  colonists,  near 
us  in  home  and  in  time,  yet  seeming  faint  and  far 
because  of  their  foreign  blood  and  their  dispersion 
over  the  earth.  Seldom  has  a  poet  chosen  a 
theme  more  likely  to  win  affection  and  enthusiasm 
from  those  to  whom  it  has  been  presented  ;  for 
seldom  has  a  verse-painter  found  or  framed  a 
story  so  responsive  to  all  his  best  aspirations  and 
powers :  to  human  sympathy,  gentle  pathos,  quiet 
trustfulness,  romantic  sentiment,  artistic  origi 
nality. 

"  Evangeline  "  is  least  successful  on  its  artistic 
side.  I  have  no  wish  to  reenter  or  to  reopen  the 
controversies  attending  the  appearance  of  this 
famous  hexameter  poem.  What  hex-  Longfellow's 
meter  may  be  in  English  is  a  question  Hexameters- 
as  yet  a  speculative  one,  though  the  history  of 
our  poetry  for  five  centuries  is  instructive  on  this 
point.  The  fact  remains  that  most  of  our  poets 
have  not  used  it,  and  that  few  indeed  have  used 
it  well,  either  in  original  or  translated  verse. 
There  is  in  it  a  fatal  facility  which,  at  first 
thought,  would  seem  likely  to  tempt  many  versi 
fiers.  But  that  facility  is  so  slippery  and  perilous 
that  few  have  essayed  it  seriously  or  long.  Eng 
lish  hexameter  is  nearly  prose,  and  rather  weak 


74  American  Literature. 

prose  at  that.  "All  that  flams  is  not  flamboy 
ant  "  ;  our  hexameter  resembles  the  Greek  in 
little  save  that  it  has  six  beats.  Majestic  melody 
and  a  beautiful  union  of  fixity  and  variety  are 
lacking  in  it.  The  quantity  and  even  the  accent 
are  too  often  arbitrary  rather  than  essential. 
Longfellow  used  it  to  better  advantage  than 
Clough  or  Howells,  and  gave  it  a  variety  and 
grace  of  treatment  beyond  the  range  of  Chap 
man's  vigorous  but  crude  powers.  But  his 
dreams  of  its  utility  in  Homeric  translation  were 
were  visions  of  what  can  never  be.  His  own 
experimental  lines  from  Homer  are  feeble  in 
comparison  with  Tennyson's  specimen  from  the 
"  Iliad"  in  unrhymed  pentameter.  English  versi 
fication  is  a  rich  and  noble  thing,  as  strong  as  the 
Greek,  as  graceful  as  the  Latin,  with  a  better 
accent-system  than  the  French,  and  more  musical 
than  the  German.  The  nineteenth  century,  in 
the  work  of  Shelley,  Coleridge,  Keats,  Scott,  Poe, 
Swinburne,  and  Longfellow  himself,  has  given 
new  and  brilliant  proofs  of  the  power  and  range 
of  the  poetry  of  the  English  tongue.  But  hex 
ameter  never  has  been  and  never  will  be  one  of 
its  strongest  instruments.  At  their  best,  Long 
fellow's  hexameters  had  an  idyllic  sweetness  and 
grace;  at  their  worst,  the  clumsy  dactyls  sounded 
like  hoof-beats  on  a  muddy  road.  The  chief 
value  of  "  Evangeline"  as  a  metrical  experiment 
was  limited  but  great:  it  proved  that  English 
hexameters  were  best  fitted  for  idyllic,  rather  than 
Homeric,  narrative.  In  "The  Courtship  of  Miles 


Henry    Wadsworth  Longfellow.  75 

Standish  "  the  charm  was  once  more  invoked,  but 
half  in  vain ;  in  the  latter  poem  we  no  longer 
wander  through 

"Green  Acadian  meadows,  with  sylvan  rivers  among  them," 

but  listen  too  often  to  the  cacophonous 

"  Praise  of   the   virtuous   woman,  as  she  is  described   in   the 
Proverbs," 

or  hear  how  she 

"  Said  in  a  tremulous  voice,  *  Why  don't  you  speak  for  yourself, 
John  ? ' " 

But  Longfellow's  best  hexameters,  in  "  Evan- 
geline,"  though  representing  neither  the  force  nor 
the  flexibility  of  the  Greek  measure  of  the  same 
name,  had  a  genuine  musical  beauty  of  their  own. 
Our  language,  lacking  the  inherent  or  local  quan 
tity  of  the  Greek,  and  its  particles  and  inflections, 
with  their  union  of  expressiveness  of  thought  and 
rapidity  of  movement,  cannot  reproduce  the 
Homeric  metre.  Not  all  the  praise  of  enthusias 
tic  friends,  and  not  all  the  acknowledged  skill  of 
Longfellow,  could  make  us  approve  such  an 
experimental  rendition  as  he  once  made  of  the 
opening  lines  of  the  Iliad  : 

Sing,  O  Goddess,  the  wrath  of  Peleidean  Achilles, 

Baleful,  that  brought  disasters  uncounted  upon  the  Achaians. 

Many  a  gallant  soul  of  heroes  flung  into  Hades, 

And  the  heroes  themselves  as  a  prey  to  the  dogs  and  to  all  the 

Fowls  of  the  air;  for  thus  the  will  of  Zeus  was  accomplished; 

From  the  time  when  first  in  wrangling  parted  asunder 

Atreus'  son,  the  monarch  of  men,  and  godlike  Achilles. 


76  American  Literature. 

This  specimen  (left  in  Longfellow's  diary,  and 
of  course  not  rigidly  to  be  criticised)  is  almost 
pitiful  in  its  inadequacy.  The  question,  more 
over,  is  not  one  of  Homeric  translation.  Bryant 
and  Tennyson  have  shown  that  our  greatest  Eng 
lish  metre — unrhymed  pentameter — can  in  some 
ways  reproduce  the  power  of  the  chief  Greek 
measure.  What  we  learn  from  Longfellow  is  not 
so  much  the  limitations  of  hexameter,  the  imper 
fect  shadow  of  its  namesake,  as  the  beauty  which 
it  may  sometimes  show.  Critic  and  general 
reader  are  at  one  in  praising  such  lines  and  pas 
sages  as  these : 

Naught  but  tradition  remains  of  the  beautiful  village  of 
Grand  Pre. 

Darkened  by  shadows  of  earth,  but  reflecting  an  image  of 
heaven. 

Late,   with  the  rising  moon,  returned  the  wains  from   the 

marshes, 
Laden  with  briny  hay,  that  filled  the  air  with  its  odor. 

Under  the  open  sky,  in  the  odorous  air  of  the  orchard. 
Sweetly  over  the  village  the  bell  of  the  Angelus  sounded. 
"  Benedicite,"  murmured  the  priest,  in  tones  of  compassion. 

And,  as  the  voice  of  the  priest  repeated  the  service  of 
sorrow, 

Lo,  with  a  mournful  sound,  like  the  voice  of  a  vast  congre 
gation, 

Solemnly  answered  the  sea,  and  mingled  its  roar  with  the 
dirges. 

Into  the  golden  stream  of  the  broad  and  swift  Mississippi. 


Henry    Wadsworth  Longfellow. 
Day  after  day  they  glided  adown  the  turbulent  river. 

vV  '    <          '" 

Over  their  heads  the  towering  and  tenebrous  boughs-  of  the 

cypress 

Met  in  a  dusky  arch,  and  trailing  mosses  in  mid-air 
Waved  like  banners  hung  on  the  walls  of  ancient  cathedrals. 

Then  in  his  place,  at  the  prow  of  the  boat,  rose  one  of  the 

oarsmen, 

And,  as  a  signal  sound,  if  others  like  them  peradventure 
Sailed  on  these  gloomy  and  midnight  streams,  blew  a  blast 

on  his  bugle. 
Wild  through  the  dark  colonnades  and  corridors  leafy  the 

blast  rang, 
Breaking  the    seal   of   silence,  and   giving   tongues   to   the 

forest. 
Soundless  above  them  the  banners  of  moss  just  stirred  to  the 

music. 

Multitudinous  echoes  awoke  and  died  in  the  distance, 
Over  the  watery  floor,  and  beneath  the  reverberant  branches ; 
But  not  a  voice  replied ;  no  answer  came  from  the  darkness  ; 
And,  when  the  echoes  had  ceased,  like  a  sense  of  pain  was 

the  silence. 

Then  he  beheld,  in   a  dream,  once  more  the  home  of  his 

childhood  ; 

Green  Acadian  meadows,  and  sylvan  rivers  among  them, 
Village,  and  mountain,  and  woodlands ;  and,  walking  under 

their  shadow, 
As  in  the  days  of  her  youth,  Evangeline  rose  in  his  vision. 

Still  stands  the  forest  primeval ;  but  far  away  from  its 
shadow, 

Side  by  side,  in  their  nameless  graves,  the  lovers  are  sleep 
ing, 

Under  the  humble  walls  of  the  little  Catholic  churchyard, 

In  the  heart  of  the  city,  they  lie,  unknown  and  unnoticed. 
Daily  the  tides  of  life  go  ebbing  and  flowing  beside  them, 
Thousands  of  throbbing  hearts,  where  theirs  are  at  rest  and 
forever, 


78  American  Literature. 

Thousands   of  aching  brains,   where    theirs   no   longer  are 

busy, 
Thousands  of  toiling  hands,  where  theirs  have  ceased  from 

their  labors, 
Thousands  of  weary  feet,  where  theirs  have  completed  their 

journey ! 

Blame  not  Longfellow  that  he  did  not  make 
better  hexameters;  praise  him  that  he  wrote  so 
good,  and  framed  them  into  an  idyl  of  true  and 
original  beauty. 

"  Evangeline  "  was  a  poem  of  idyllic  pathos  ; 
"The  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish  "  a  love  story 
"The  Court  tm^e<^  w^tn  humor,  and  set  against 
ship  of  Miles  the  background  of  historic  Massachu- 

Standish."  _° 

setts.  1  he  dry  bones  of  Puritanism 
lived  once  more  when  Longfellow  breathed  upon 
them  the  spirit  of  the  human  love  that  never 
grows  old,  and  that  could  not  be  crushed  by  the 
austerity  of  dogma  or  the  poverty  of  colonial 
beginnings.  Longfellow,  at  his  best,  was  a  good 
story-teller;  and  though  "  The  Courtship  of  Miles 
Standish"  is  distinctly  a  smaller  and  lower  pro 
duction  than  "  Evangeline,"  its  constructive  merit 
is  considerable.  The  swinging  measure  of  the 
hexameter  somehow  lent  itself  well  to  the  sly  and 
archaic  humor  of  the  tale  ;  and  Longfellow,  who 
always  required  plenty  of  room  in  which  to  make 
a  jest,  here  pleasantly  mingled  the  amusing,  the 
descriptive,  and  the  passionate.  The  picture 
seems  possible  rather  than  actual ;  the  humanity 
of  the  poetic  Evangeline  legend  appears  truer 
than  that  of  the  well-known  Puritan  story  ;  and 


Henry    Wadsworth  Longfellow.  79 

the  later  book  merely  pleases  where  the  former 
touched  the  heart.  This,  indeed,  is  precisely 
what  it  aimed  to  do ;  and  we  have  in  "  The 
Legend  of  Miles  Standish  "  another  proof  of  the 
breadth  of  range  and  achievement  in  which  Long 
fellow  surpassed  all  other  American  poets,  and  in 
which  he  was  approached  by  Lowell  only,  at  a 
considerable  distance.  Our  chief  representative 
of  continental  culture  was  also  a  peculiarly  Amer 
ican  poet,  even  aside  from  his  masterpiece,  "  Hi- ! 
awatha,"  the  most  American  poem  of  all. 

On  June  22,  1854,  when  Longfellow  was 
forty-seven  years  old,  he  made  this  entry  in  his 
diary  :  '*  I  have  at  length  hit  upon  a  plan  for  a 
poem  on  the  American  Indians,  which  seems  to 
me  the  right  one,  and  the  only.  It  is  to  weave 
together  their  beautiful  traditions  into  a  whole. 
I  have  hit  upon  a  measure,  too,  which  I  think  the 
right  and  only  one  for  such  a  theme."  Long-  ? 
fellow  was  a  painstaking  literary  artist,  who  care-  \ 
fully  analyzed  the  thought  and  as  carefully 
planned  the  form.  He  was  a  good  judge,  further 
more,  of  the  merit  and  probable  success  of  his 
productions.  It  is  true  that  he  sometimes  erred  ; 
he  worked  for  more  than  twenty  years  over  his 
trilogy  of  "  Christus  "  ;  planned  but  never  com 
pleted  an  addition  to  its  closing  part,  as  finally 
j  printed;  and  sent  forth  "The  Divine  Tragedy," 
|  the  portion  first  in  order  and  last  in  composition, 
with  more  misgivings  than  ever  accompanied  the 
advent  of  any  other  of  his  works.  This  com 
pleted  trilogy  never  fulfilled  the  hopes  of  "  the 


8o  American  Literature. 

consecration  and  the  poet's  dream "  ;  and  the 
reader  is  not — as  the  cautious  author  was  not — at 
a  loss  to  discover  why.  But  the  author's  serene 
confidence  concerning  "  Hiawatha" — expressed, 
let  us  remember,  in  a  private  memorandum,  and 
not  for  the  public — was  perfectly  justified  by  the 
result.  The  poem  remains  the  greatest  achieve-  \ 
ment  of  Longfellow,  and  the  one  surest  to  arouse 
interest  as  the  years  go  by.  Its  suc- 

"  Hiawatha." 

cess  can  never  be  repeated  ;  its  maker 
himself  wisely  essayed  no  new  triumph  in  the 
same  field.  In  theme  and  in  general  and  special 
treatment  "Hiawatha,"  to  repeat  a  phrase  already 
used,  is  our  "nearest  approach  to  an  American  * 
epic."  It  is  a  semi-epic  about  a  race,  and  not  from 
it ;  yet  notwithstanding  this  fact,  it  is  to  be 
ranked  with  such  productions  as  "  Beowulf T'  or 
"  The  Song  of  Roland." 

The  character  of  the  North  American  Indian  at 
his  best,  described  historically  by  Francis  Park- 
man  and  romantically  by  Fenimore  Cooper,  is 
here  set  forth  poetically.  An  adequate  basis  of 
truthfulness  to  aboriginal  ideas  is  retained  ;  but 
upon  it  is  built  a  fabric  of  imagination  and  dream 
land.  Thus,  the  poet  tells  us,  thought  the  wild 
man  of  the  west,  in  his  loftier  moods  and  more 
poetic  legends  ;  and  his  interpreter  in  verse  adds 
to  his  fidelity  to  the  originals  a  constructive  art 
lacking  in  the  Indian  mind.  Here  are  the  skies 
and  waters,  the  woods  and  hunting-life,  the  fan 
cies  and  the  loves  of  the  white  man's  predecessors. 
Many  tales  are  gathered  into  a  symmetrical  whole, 


Henry    Wadsworth  Longfellow,  81 

the  hero-legend  forming,  after  a  familiar  plan,  the 
chain  upon  which  lesser  stories  and  mythological 
narrations  are  hung.  Everything  may  be  in 
cluded,  if  it  be  characteristic.  The  career  of  a 
typical  man  through  life,  in  his  experiences 
between  the  unknown  and  the  unknown — such  is 
any  race-epic,  and  such  is  "  Hiawatha"  in  a  full 
degree.  Beside  the  central  figure  are  his  fellows 
and  his  love  ;  above  him  are  the  powers  of  light 
and  darkness  ;  beneath  is  the  all-nourishing  earth  ; 
and  before  him  the  land  of  the  hereafter.  The 
plan  is  rounded  and  complete  ;  the  scene  is  filled 
with  representative  figures  ;  the  movement  is 
steady  and  symmetrical ;  and  yet  behind  all  the 
poet  stands  invisible,  such  is  the  excellent  art  he 
has  shown.  The  race-poem,  too,  has  a  univer 
sal  bearing.  It  touches  the  mystery  and  destiny 
of  all  human  life.  In  Hiawatha  the  reader  sees 
not  only  the  representative  of  a  westward-moving 
people,  but  also  an  allegorical  picture  of  one's  * 
own  progress  onward. 

But  the  reader  of  "  Hiawatha"  does  not  labor 
over  its  pages  as  a  student  or  philosopher,  study 
ing  ethnology  or  the  mystery  of  the  universe. 
He  turns  to  it  as  he  would  "pore  upon  the  brook 
that  babbles  by."  Here  in  these  stories  are  a 
garland  of  flowers,  a  fair  and  shadowy  vision,  an 
odor  of  an  unknown  land.  Now  that  the  super 
ficial  controversies  concerning  the  trochaics  of 
:<  Hiawatha"  have  been  forgotten,  I  suppose  few 
will  quarrel  with  the  art  of  the  poem.  When  a 

metre  is  musical  in  itself,  is  well  fitted  to  the  idea 
6 


82  American  Literature. 

and  even  the  nomenclature  of  its  theme,  and  is 
made  the  natural  means  of  sweetly  singing  the 
song  of  the  author,  there  would  seem  to  be  little 
for  the  critics  to  quarrel  about.  Nothing  suc 
ceeds  like  success  ;  and  here  the  artist  and  poet 
accurately  measured  his  theme,  his  scheme,  and 
his  powers  of  execution.  Let  those  who  have 
rivalled  or  surpassed  him  in  such  a  measurement 
be  the  ones  who  may  venture  to  laugh  at  the 
alleged  eccentricity  of  this  sui  generis  poem  of 
the  western  world.  But  it  is  not  the  art  of 
"  Hiawatha"  which  most  pleases  us.  We  read  it 
not  because  of  its  form  but  because  of  its  nature. 
These  legends  of  prairie-land  belong  to  the  great 
story-book  of  the  world,  that  treasury  of  lay  and 
legend  which  delights  the  childhood  of  a  man  and 
a  people,  and  brightens  long  days  of  labor  and 
nights  devoid  of  ease,  for  those,  at  least,  who 
carry  the  childlike  heart  into  middle-life  and  age. 

Should  you  ask  me,  whence  these  stories  ? 
Whence  these  legends  and  traditions, 
With  the  odors  of  the  forest, 
With  the  dew  and  damp  of  meadows, 
With  the  curling  smoke  of  wigwams, 
With  the  rushing  of  great  rivers, 
With  their  frequent  repetitions, 
And  their  wild  reverberations, 
As  of  thunder  in  the  mountains  ? 

I  should  answer,  I  should  tell  you, 
"  From  the  forests  and  the  prairies, 
From  the  great  lakes  of  the  Northland, 
From  the  land  of  the  O  jib  ways, 


Henry    Wads  worth  Longfellow.  83 

From  the  land  of  the  Dacotahs, 

From  the  mountains,  moors,  and  fenlands, 

Where  the  heron,  the  Shuh-shuh-gah, 

Feeds  among  the  reeds  and  rushes. 

I  repeat  them  as  I  heard  them 

From  the  lips  of  Nawadaha, 

The  musician,  the  sweet  singer." 

Should  you  ask  where  Nawadaha 
*Found  these  songs,  so.  wild  and  wayward, 
Found  these  legends  and  traditions, 
I  should  answer,  I  should  tell  you, 

"  In  the  birds'-nests  of  the  forest, 
In  the  lodges  of  the  beaver, 
In  the  hoof-prints  of  the  bison, 
In  the  eyry  of  the  eagle  ! 

"  All  the  wild-fowl  sang  them  to  him, 
In  the  moorlands  and  the  fenlands, 
In  the  melancholy  marshes  : 
Chetowaik,  the  plover,  sang  them, 
Mahng.  the  loon,  the  wild-goose,  Wawa, 
The  blue  heron,  the  Shuh-shuh-gah, 
And  the  grouse,  the  Mushkodasa ! " 


There  he  sang  of  Hiawatha, 
Sang  the  song  of  Hiawatha, 
Sawg  his  wondrous  birth  and  being, 
How  he  prayed  and  how  he  fasted, 
How  he  lived,  and  toiled,  and  suffered, 
That  the  tribes  of  men  might  prosper, 
That  he  might  advance  his  people  ! 

Ye  who  love  the  haunts  of  Nature, 
Love  the  sunshine  of  the  meadow, 
Love  the  shadow  of  the  forest, 
Love  the  wind  among  the  branches, 
And  the  rain-shower  and  the  snow-storm, 
And  the  rushing  of  great  rivers, 


84  American  Literatiire. 

Through  their  palisades  of  pine-trees, 
And  the  thunder  in  the  mountains, 
Whose  innumerable  echoes 
Flap  like  eagles  in  the  eyries : — 
Listen  to  these  wild  traditions, 
To  this  song  of  Hiawatha ! 

Ye  who  love  a  nation's  legends, 
Love  the  ballads  of  a  people, 
That  like  voices  from  afar  off 
Call  to  us  to  pause  and  listen, 
Speak  in  tones  so  plain  and  childlike, 
Scarcely  can  the  ear  distinguish 
Whether  they  are  sung  or  spoken  : — 
Listen  to  this  Indian  legend, 
To  this  song  of  Hiawatha ! 

Ye  whose  hearts  are  fresh  and  simple, 
Who  have  faith  in  God,  and  Nature, 
Who  believe,  that  in  all  ages 
Every  human  heart  is  human, 
That  in  even  savage  bosoms 
There  are  longings,  yearnings,  strivings 
For  the  good  they  comprehend  not, 
That  the  feeble  hands  and  helpless, 
Groping  blindly  in  the  darkness, 
Touch  God's  right  hand  in  that  darkness 
And  are  lifted  up  and  strengthened  : — 
Listen  to  this  simple  story, 
To  this  song  of  Hiawatha  ! 

In  "  Hiawatha"  we  wander  amid  woodland 
shadows,  with  the  far,  light  clouds  above  us 
and  the  black  American  rivers  at  our  feet.  The 
smell  of  pine-needles  is  in  the  air,  and  the  whirr 
of  the  partridge  or  the  liquid  song  of  the  thrush 
occasionally  falls  upon  the  ear.  Chaucer  put  the 


Henry    Wadsworth  Longfellow.  85 

fresh  breezes  of  old  England  into  his  perennially 
vital  tales ;  Longfellow  sings  to  us  ruder  legends 
than  Chaucer  gathered,  and  charms  us  with  the 
stories  .of  those  virgin  prairies  and  uncut  forests 
that  knew  not  even  a  crude  civilization  like  that 
of  the  court  of  King  Richard  the  Second. 

These  trochaics  are  excellently  suited  to  the 
presentation  and  fit  portrayal  of  that  spontaneous 
beauty  which  belongs  to  Nature  and  her  spontaneous 
children,  unspoiled  by  arts  and  civiliza-  Beauty. 
tion.  The  very  regularity  of  the  short-line  meas 
ure  is  an  advantage  ;  it  goes  along  in  an  agree 
ably  monotonous  undertone  that  reminds  one  of 
the  accompaniment  to  Schubert's  Die  schone  Miil- 
lerin  songs,  whereby  the  steadily  purling  brook  is 
represented,  while  the  soaring  air  tells  the  story 
of  the  maid  of  the  mill.  In  "  Hiawatha"  the  / 
words  are  the  aboriginal  song  and  the  measure  is 
the  accompaniment,  the  two  being  combined  in 
that  natural  union  which  marks  the  true  lyric 
poem,  whether  of  ten  lines  or  ten  thousand. 
Hiawatha,  Minnehaha,  Shawondasee,  Wenonah, 
Mahnomonee,  Nahma,  Nokomis — the  very  names 
are  little  poems  ;  while  the  more  guttural  and 
explosive  words  of  the  Indian  dialect  but  increase 
the  charm  of  the  melody  by  their  occasional 
twang  of  strength  or  clash  of  discord. 

I  suppose  the  most  obvious  criticism  evoked  by 

"  Hiawatha"   is    based  upon   its    tau-   Repetitions  and 

/tology  and  consequent  length.     The       Parallelisms. 

tautology  is  partly  that  of  translation   and  partly 

that  of  paraphrase.      He  must  be  a  learned  or  a 


86  American  Literature. 

fastidious  reader  who  objects  to  such  self-explana 
tory  lines  as  these,  which  so  often  occur  through 
out  the  whole  poem  : 

Forth  upon  the  Gitche  Gumee, 
On  the  shining  Big- Sea- Water, 
With  his  fishing-line  of  cedar, 
Of  the  twisted  bark  of  cedar, 
Forth  to  catch  the  sturgeon  Nahma, 
Mishe-Nahma,  King  of  Fishes. 
In  his  birch-canoe  exulting 
All  alone  went  Hiawatha. 

Through  the  clear,  transparent  water 
He  could  see  the  fishes  swimming 
Far  down  in  the  depths  below  him  ; 
See  the  yellow  perch,  the  Sahwa, 
Like  a  sunbeam  in  the  water, 
See  the  Shawgashee,  the  craw-fish, 
On  the  white  and  sandy  bottom. 

As  for  the  parallelisms  in  the  poem,  their  ' 
fitness,  then,  may  be  defended  on  the  double 
ground  that  clearness  was  essential,  and  that  the 
Indian  character,  like  the  Hebrew,  lends  itself 
readily  to  this  form  of  utterance.  The  poem  as  a 
whole  is  not  prolix,  and  any  section  illustrates 
the  fact  that  force  and  even  brevity  are  often 
increased  by  the  cumulative  method  which 
belongs  to  the  parallelism. 

Thirty  years  after  the  publication  of  "  Hia 
watha  "  we  can  look  calmly  at  the  excited  but  now 
unimportant  discussions  that  attended  its  appear 
ance.  We  will  readily  admit  that  the  measure  is 
easily  written ;  but  who  save  Longfellow  has  mas- 


Henry   Wadsworth  Longfellow.  87 

tered  it  and  turned  it  to  the  implicit  service  of  a 
poetic  idea  ?  We  grant,  too,  that  in  the  poem  the 
Indian  character  is  idealized  ;  but  it  is  not  dis 
torted.  One  is  not  ready  to  aver  that  a  semi- 
ideal  picture  of  any  part  of  humanity  is  to  be 
rejected  because  it  is  not  strictly  realistic  as 
regards  the  average  race-type  ;  otherwise  we  must 
throw  aside  Homer,  the  "  Divine  Comedy," 
"  Faust,"  the  "Elder  Edda,"  the  "Song  of 
Roland."  "  Hiawatha  "  possesses  the  poetic  mer 
its  of  imagination,  descriptive  power,  native  origi 
nality,  and  broad  interest  ;  and  so,  fortunately,  it 
is  able  to  take  care  of  its  own  place  in  literature. 
It  is  a  book  that  seems  to  its  present  readers  to 
miss  greatness  ;  but  it  is  quite  possible  that  the 
time  will  come  when,  his  other  writings  forgotten  >. 
or  ignored,  the  name  of  Longfellow  will  be  chiefly 
known  as  that  of  the  author  of  "  Hiawatha." 

Of  all  Longfellow's  works  the  most  ambitious, 
on  the  whole,  was  that  trilogy  which  was  pub 
lished  in  its  complete  form  in  1872,  under  the 
title  of  "  Christus,  a  Mystery."  The  first  part, 
"The  Divine  Tragedy,"  had  appeared  «<christus,  a 
in  the  preceding  year  ;  the  third,  "  The  Mystery- 
New  England  Tragedies,"  in  1868 ;  and  the 
second,  "The  Golden  Legend,"  as  far  back  as 
1851.  When  issued  together,  under  the  final 
title,  they  were  equipped  with  two  connecting 
Interludes  and  a  Finale,  then  first  published. 
The  general  design  of  the  work  was  to  present 
three  pictures  of  Christianity,  in  widely  separated 
ages  :  those  of  its  founder,  of  mediaeval  Roman- 


88  American  Literature. 

ism  in  its  better  estate,  and  of  New  England 
Puritanism.  The  plan  was  a  good  one,  but  the 
selection  of  periods,  and  the  execution,  very 
imperfect.  "  The  Golden  Legend  "  versified  an 
old  German  story  of  a  maiden's  self-sacrifice  for 
her  prince,  who  rewarded  her  with  all  his  love  and 
half  his  throne.  The  story  is  pretty  but  not  sig 
nificant,  in  the  broad  and  long  history  of  Chris 
tianity.  "  The  New  England  Tragedies,"  in  their 
division,  represent  a  cold,  hard,  and  temporary 
phase  of  religious  life,  strong  in  the  ideas  of 
theism  and  the  "  perseverance  of  the  saints,"  but 
sadly  lacking  in  the  all-embracing  caritas  of 
Christ,  which  has  been  the  most  important  note 
of  Christianity  from  the  beginning.  The  para 
phrase  of  the  Gospels  in  "  The  Divine  Tragedy," 
the  first  part  of  the  trilogy,  is  noble  in  language 
and  spiritual  in  effect  ;  few  writers  in  Christian  lit 
erature,  from  Caedmon  to  our  own  day,  have  so 
well  succeeded  in  this  difficult  task.  But  the  con 
trast  between  this  division  and  the  two  other 
selected  episodes  is  grotesque,  almost  painful.  A 
score  of  m.ore  significant  themes  in  Christian  his 
tory  might  have  been  selected.  The  union  of  the 
three  parts  of  "  Christus "  is  so  infelicitous  as 
almost  to  seem  an  afterthought,  but  the  final 
biography  of  the  poet  shows  that  such  was  not 
the  case.  To  the  third  and  last  division  he  once 
thought  of  adding  a  picture  of  the  life  of  the 
Moravians  in  Bethlehem,  Pennsylvania,  which  fit 
and  characteristic  addition  was  never  made.  The 
poet  himself  has  more  than  once  recorded  his  mis- 


Henry    Wadsworth  Longfellow.  89 

givings  concerning  the  first  and  third  parts  of  this 
book ;  they  afford  another  proof  of  the  general 
sanity  of  his  art  and  the  justice  of  self-esteem. 
Indeed,  the  whole  was  less  than  the  sum  of  its 
parts;  for  "The  Divine  Tragedy"  and  "The 
Golden  Legend"  were  good  in  their  respective 
ways,  though  not  great.  In  a  large  composite 
poem  of  this  sort  a  partial  success  is  a  virtual 
failure, 

In  1863,  when  he  published  the  first  part  of  the 
"  Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn,"  Longfellow  had 
reached  a  critical  point  in  the  career  of  a  sucess- 
ful  author.  He  was  fifty-six  years  old ;  his  rep 
utation  was  firmly  established,  both  upon  his  sub 
jective  lyrics  and  upon  "  Evangeline  "  and  "  Hi 
awatha";  and  the  usual  question  arose,  in  the 
minds  of  his  readers,  whether  that  reputation  was 
to  be  increased,  maintained,  or  impaired  in  the 
latter  years  of  his  life.  New  methods  and  forces 
in  English  verse  were  beginning  to  appear  or  to 
attract  the  public :  Browning,  Arnold,  and  the 
young  pre-Raphaelite  poets  in  England,  and 
Whitman  and  the  western  or  ultra  "American" 
singers  in  the  United  States.  The  reputation  of 
Emerson,  too,  was  steadily  and  surely  advancing 
to  a  point  from  which  it  was  not  to  recede ;  Poe 
was  gaining  in  foreign  renown  with  the  passing 
years ;  Whittier  and  some  lesser  lyrists  were  rival 
ling  the  Cambridge  bard  in  their  poems  of  the 
war ;  and  Lowell,  in  his  later  work,  was  displaying 
somewhat  of  the  depth  of  Emerson  and  the  musi 
cal  flow  of  the  verse  of  his  neighbor  and  friend. 


90  American  Literature. 

On  the  whole,  during  the  two  remaining  decades 
of  Longfellow's  life,  there  was  the  maintenance  of 
a  reputation  already  won,  and  not  its  substantial 
increase  or  evident  diminution.  Accurately  meas 
uring  his  powers,  he  continued  to  write  admirable 
short  poems  of  thought,  sentiment,  or  suggestion, 
which,  though  not  rivalling  the  popularity  of  his 
earlier  poems,  aroused  no  feeling  of  disappoint 
ment  and  no  special  complaint  of  inadequacy. 
Of  the  merit  of  his  noble  and  self-contained 
sonnets  I  have  already  spoken. 

In  "  The  Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn,"  Longfellow 
grouped  together  by  a  device  familiar  since  the 
days  of  the  "  Decameron  "  and  the  "  Canterbury 
Tales,"  graphic  pictures  of  local  life  and  character, 
and  duly  representative  tales  from  the  old  world 
and  the  new.  The  merit  of  the  stories  and  inter- 
« Tales  of  a  ludes  of  the  several  series  of  "  Tales 
wayside  inn."  of  a  Wayside  Inn,"  appearing  at  inter 
vals  during  a  decade,  was  on  the  whole  a  declin 
ing  one;  but  the  whole  work  is  an  enjoyable, 
varied,  and  characteristic  miscellany  of  tales  in 
verse.  The  weather-beaten  old  inn  at  Sudbury; 
the  thinly-veiled  characters  from  real  life ;  the 
interesting  and  well-told  episodes  of  narration  and 
song,  combined  to  produce  a  work  that  charmed 
and  will  charm.  The  giving  of  pleasure — that  is 
a  true  mark  of  a  picture  or  poem  deserving  its 
name ;  and  surely  pleasure  is  to  be  found  in  many 
of  these  simple,  graceful,  and  pure  tales  of  to-day 
or  of  old.  The  poet  seems  to  sing  his  natural 
thought ;  the  public  has  but  to  listen  and  to  ap- 


Henry    Wadsworth  Longfellow.  91 

plaud  with  the  sense  that  it  is  still  the  poet's  mis 
sion,  as  in  the  days  of  "  Dan  Chaucer,  the  first 
warbler,"  to  tell  us  of  nature  and  human  nature, 
of  wildwood,  shaw,  and  green,  and  the  hearts  of 
men  and  women. 

These  are  the  tales  those  merry  guests 

Told  to  each  other,  well  or  ill; 
Like  summer  birds  that  lift  their  crests 
Above  the  borders  of  their  nests 

And  twitter,  and  again  are  still. 
These  are  the  tales,  or  new  or  old, 
In  idle  moments  idly  told  ; 
Flowers  of  the  field  with  petals  thin, 
Lilies  that  neither  toil  nor  spin, 

And  tufts  of  wayside  weeds  and  gorse 
Hung  in  the  parlor  of  the  inn 

Beneath  the  sign  of  the  Red  Horse. 

Two  of  Longfellow's  larger  works  remain  to  be 
mentioned.     'In  the  closing  months  of  1867,  after 
many  a  year  of  preparation,  was  printed  that  lit 
eral  and   isometrical^nrhymed^  tran 
tion_pf  the  "  Dmne  Comedy"  o7  Dante  Dante- 

~whicR~  remains  closely  associated  with  the  fame  of 
Longfellow,  to  whom  culture  in  America  already 
owed  so  much.  Its  strict  fidelity  to  the  original ; 
the  careful  scholarship  which  had  literally  scruti 
nized  every  word,  often  with  the  assistance  of 
competent  friends  who  met  regularly  to  aid  the 
translator ;  the  frequent  combination  of  a  life-giv 
ing  spirit  with  the  exact  letter  of  utterance,  gave 
this  version  a  place  which  it  is  not  likely  to  lose, 
at  the  head,  on  the  whole,  of  English  translation 
of  Dante.  The  literalist  school  of  translators 


92  American  Literature. 

does  not  often  receive  aid  from  a  more  valuable 
or  learned  helper,  at  once  scholar  and  poet. 
Longfellow's  Dante  possesses  nearly  every  merit 
save  that  of  readability;  in  peculiarly  important 
passages  it  sacrifices  too  much  to  the  original ; 
and  its  unrhymed  lines,  with  their  too  frequent 
use  of  the  feminine  ending  of  the  verse,  become 
wearisome  long  before  the  solemn  journey  from 
hell  to  paradise  is  completed.  This  feminine  end 
ing  is  one  thing  in  Italian,  and  another  in  Eng 
lish.  It  must  be  said,  too,  that  Dante's  soaring 
fire  does  not  flame  in  Longfellow. 

The  drama  "  Michael  Angelo,"  left  by  the  poet 
in  manuscript,  was  his  latest  essay  in  dramatic 
"Michael  composition,  and  one  of  his  longest.  It 
Angeio."  jlas  some  fjne  ljnes  anc[  strong  passages, 

but  it  leaves  upon  the  mind  no  characteristic  im 
press,  no  lasting  historical  or  personal  picture. 
A  play  that  does  not  in  some  way  stamp  itself 
upon  the  memory  is  an  unsuccessful  play,  espe 
cially  when  it  attempts  something  more  than  mere 
amusement.  Longfellow  was  not  at  his  best  in 
his  dramas,  but  in  his  lyrics,  idyls,  and  narratives, 
and  in  such  panoramic  poems  as  "The  Building 
of  the  Ship,"  "  The  Rope  walk,"  "  Rain  in  Sum 
mer,"  "Keramos,"  or  "The  Hanging  of  the 
Crane."  He  could  admirably  present  a  series  of 
pictures  or  a  chain  of  stories  ;  but  he  could  not 
tell  us,  in  forceful  scenes  and  acts  and  plays,  how 

"  Men's  lives,  like  oceans,  change 
In  shifting  tides,  and  ebb  from  either  shore 
Till  the  strong  planet  draws  them  on  once  more." 


V 

Henry    Wadsworth  Longfellow.  93 

In  estimating  the  life-work  of  Longfellow  as  a 
poet,  the  personality  and  the  product  The  Man  and 
cannot  be  separated.  The  sweet  and  the  Poet, 
sympathetic  and  strong  and  self-reliant  soul,  so 
fully  portrayed  in  the  three-volume  life  by  the 
poet's  brother,  ever  animates  the  verse.  Long 
fellow  looked  out  upon  life  and  sang  his  thoughts 
concerning  its  joys  and  its  mysteries.  His  lyrics 
and  idyls  and  dramatic  studies  and  reflective 
poems  illuminate  with  catholic  sympathy  and 
quiet  optimism  the  procession  of  human  exist 
ence  :  childhood,  youth  with  its  loves  and  hopes, 
middle-life  with  its  bereavements  and  struggles, 
age  with  its  wasting  and  weariness  and  patiently 
continued  work,  death  as  the  transition  to  another 
stage  of  progress  and  experience.  His  poems 
lack  not  thought,  nor  feeling,  nor  art,  but  well 
combine  the  three.  What  he  misses  in  intellect-  , 
ual  greatness  he  possesses  in  heartfulness.  He 
was  the  St.  John  of  our  American  apostles  of 
song.  He  allowed  the  poets  of  intricate  philoso 
phy,  the  sad  singers  of  wan  pre-Raphaelitism,  the 
cosmic  bards  of  atlas  and  city  directory,  and  the 
"  howling  dervishes  of  song,"  to  go  their  way 
while  he  went  his.  His  word  was  spoken  to 
those  who  work  and  win,  struggle  and  lose,  love 
and  bury.  He  ranged  from  the  American  hearth-  I 
stone  to  the  castle-towers  of  the  Rhine.  He 
adorned  the  simplest  thought  with  spoils  of  medi 
aeval  and  continental  culture.  An  American,  he 
was  too  wise  to  refuse  to  learn  of  Europe.  A 
man  of  culture,  he  knew  as  well  as  Hawthorne 


96  American  Literature. 

Shall  we  sit  idly  down  and  say 
The  night  hath  come  ;  it  is  no  longer  day  ? 
The  night  hath  not  yet  come ;  we  are  not  quite 
Cut  off  from  labor  by  the  failing  light ; 
Something  remains  for  us  to  do  or  dare ; 
Even  the  oldest  tree  some  fruit  may  bear ; 
Not  (Edipus  Coloneus,  or  Greek  ode 
Or  tales  of  pilgrims  that  one  morning  rode 
Out  of  the  gateway  of  the  Tabard  Inn, 
But  other  something,  would  we  but  begin  ; 
For  age  is  opportunity  no  less 
Than  youth  itself,  though  in  another  dress, 
And  as  the  evening  twilight  fades  away 
The  sky  is  filled  with  stars,  invisible  by  day. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

EDGAR    ALLAN    POE. 

No  book  in  my  library  contains  a  more  inter 
esting  and  suggestive  portrait  than  that  which 
forms  the  frontispiece  of  the  most  extended  biog 
raphy  of  Poe.  It  is  a  photograph  copied  from  a 
daguerreotype  formerly  owned  by  the  poet's 
friend  "  Stella/'  Estelle  Anna  Lewis.  The  pict 
ure  is  a  truth-teller,  one  of  those  accurate  presen 
tations  of  the  real  man  which  photography  is 
occasionally  able  to  produce.  No  Edgar  Allan  Poe) 
etcher  or  engraver  has  altered  the  1809-1849. 

lines  or  changed  the  life  of  the  eye ;  one  feels 
that  he  is  looking  at  Poe  himself.  Around  the 
portrait  gather  the  memories  of  words  spoken  or 
written  concerning  him,  by  men  who  were  the 
daily  companions  of  his  genius  and  of  his  selfish 
ness  ;  and  at  length  the  personality  of  the  poet 
seems  almost  present — the  pale,  high  forehead, 
the  dark,  clustering  hair,  the  deep  sad  eyes,  the 
supercilious  and  irresolute  mouth,  the  slight, 
proud  figure,  the  traces  of  dissipation  marring  the 
evident  genius.  One  side  of  the  face  is  longer, 
manlier,  and  handsomer  than  the  other ;  we  seem 
to  be  looking  at  Doctor  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde 
at  the  moment  when  change  impends.  In  our 
own  minds,  as  we  gaze  at  this  counterfeit  present- 

97 


96  American  Literature. 

Shall  we  sit  idly  down  and  say 
The  night  hath  come  ;  it  is  no  longer  day  ? 
The  night  hath  not  yet  come ;  we  are  not  quite 
Cut  off  from  labor  by  the  failing  light ; 
Something  remains  for  us  to  do  or  dare ; 
Even  the  oldest  tree  some  fruit  may  bear ; 
Not  CEdipus  Coloneus,  or  Greek  ode 
Or  tales  of  pilgrims  that  one  morning  rode 
Out  of  the  gateway  of  the  Tabard  Inn, 
But  other  something,  would  we  but  begin  ; 
For  age  is  opportunity  no  less 
Than  youth  itself,  though  in  another  dress, 
And  as  the  evening  twilight  fades  away 
The  sky  is  filled  with  stars,  invisible  by  day. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

EDGAR    ALLAN    POE. 

No  book  in  my  library  contains  a  more  inter 
esting  and  suggestive  portrait  than  that  which 
forms  the  frontispiece  of  the  most  extended  biog 
raphy  of  Poe.  It  is  a  photograph  copied  from  a 
daguerreotype  formerly  owned  by  the  poet's 
friend  "  Stella,"  Estelle  Anna  Lewis.  The  pict 
ure  is  a  truth-teller,  one  of  those  accurate  presen 
tations  of  the  real  man  which  photography  is 
occasionally  able  to  produce.  No  Edgar  Allan  Poe, 
etcher  or  engraver  has  altered  the  1809-1849. 

lines  or  changed  the  life  of  the  eye  ;  one  feels 
that  he  is  looking  at  Poe  himself.  Around  the 
portrait  gather  the  memories  of  words  spoken  or 
written  concerning  him,  by  men  who  were  the 
daily  companions  of  his  genius  and  of  his  selfish 
ness  ;  and  at  length  the  personality  of  the  poet 
seems  almost  present — the  pale,  high  forehead, 
the  dark,  clustering  hair,  the  deep  sad  eyes,  the 
supercilious  and  irresolute  mouth,  the  slight, 
proud  figure,  the  traces  of  dissipation  marring  the 
evident  genius.  One  side  of  the  face  is  longer, 

|  manlier,  and  handsomer  than  the  other ;  we  seem 
to  be  looking  at  Doctor  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde 
at  the  moment  when  change  impends.  In  our 

;  own  minds,  as  we  gaze  at  this  counterfeit  present- 

97 


98  American  Literature. 

ment,  so  significant  and  so  sad,  pity  and  disgust 
struggle  with  the  reverence  due  to  genius.  Here 
is  a  being  weakly  yielding  to  intemperance  and  to 
worse  ingratitude ;  yet  here  is  one  of  the  most  dis 
tinct  and  unquestioned  powers  in  the  history  of -^ 
American  intellect.  "  This  is  the  porcelain  clay 
of  humankind"-— how  fragile  and  how  fine. 

At  the  very  outset  of  any  critical  discussion  of 
Poe's  literary  products  it  is  necessary  to  obtain  a 
Poe's  clear  view  of  two  things  :  the  relation 

personality,  between  his  personality  and  his  work, 
and  the  peculiar  character  of  the  field  occupied  by 
the  best  of  his  poems  and  tales.  The  life-story 
of  Poe  arouses  peculiar  interest  in  young  minds, 
and  possesses  a  never-ending  fascination  for  that 
class  of  essayists  and  biographers  which  delights 
in  attempting  to  "  reverse  history,"  to  paint  a 
nimbus  around  the  sinner's  head,  or  to  throw  mud 
at  Aristides  the  just.  Poe's  first  biographer, 
formerly  his  friend  and  latterly  his  literary  execu 
tor,  undoubtedly  presented  too  distorted  and  ill- 
favored  a  portrait  of  his  subject.  Later  writers, 
however,  not  content  with  appealing  from  some  of 
Dr.  Griswold's  severer  judgments,  have  sought 
to  vindicate  Poe  throughout,  a  task  manifestly 
impossible.  The  facts  presented  in  the  largest 
and  most  laudatory  biography  (Ingram's)  are  in 
themselves  enough  to  sadden  or  repel  the  impar 
tial  reader.  From  the  careful  study  of  nearly  all 
of  the  vast  mass  of  Poe  literature,  and  from  dili 
gent  inquiry  among  those  of  his  contemporaries 
with  whom  I  could  speak,  I  am  satisfied  that 


Edgar  Allan  Poe.  99 

Poe,  on  the  one  hand,  was  industrious,  usually 
devoted  to  his  wife  and  her  mother,  and  chaste  in 
thought  and  life  ;  while,  on  the  other,  he  was  tact 
less,  imperious  and  wayward  of  temper,  too  fond 
of  sentimental  attitudinizing,  occasionally  treach 
erous  toward  loyal  friends,  and  wretchedly  intem 
perate.  With  these  plain  statements,  to  which 
should  be  added  a  denial  that  he  was  addicted  to 
the  opium  habit,  the  literary  historian  may  dismiss 
the  personality  of  Poe.  Few  authors  of  note 
have  so  completely  severed  the  life  and  the  book.  - 
All  that  Poe  could  have  written  we  have,  and  we 
have  it  in  as  finished  form  as  his  utmost  diligence 
could  give.  No  American  author  save  Haw 
thorne  ever  wrote  and  rewrote  with  such  sane  and 
constant  care.  The  notion  that  Poe  "  dashed 
off"  his  poems  in  his  wilder  moods  is  at  the 
farthest  remove  from  the  truth.  Poe's  senti 
mental  friendships  and  personal  or  local  preju 
dices  colored  his  critical  work,  it  is  true  ;  and  of 
course  his  genius  was  deeply  moved  and  modified 
in  its  nature  by  the  awful  and  constantly  remem 
bered  progress  of  death  through  his  little  world 
of  intense  friendships ;  but  his  poems  and  his 
imaginative  prose,  on  which,  of  course,  his  ulti 
mate  fame  must  rest,  were  neither  weakened  nor 
stained  by  the  sins  and  miseries  of  a  woe-begone / 
life.  The  very  problem  of  immortality,  around 
which  fell  his  deepest  shadows  and  above  which 
hung  his  serenest  star,  he  treated  in  the  manner 
of  a  man  to  whom  the  " -eternal  streams"  were 
nearer  than  the  Hudson  or  the  Schuylkill.  Poe's 


ioo  American  Literature. 

own  field  is  that  of  the  purely  imaginative  ;  and 
there   his   chief  writings,  creations  of   mere  mind, 

have 

"  Left  but  the  name 
Of  his  fault  and  his  sorrows  behind." 

The  genius  of  Poe  expressed  itself,  from  the 
first,  in  a  literary  field  coextensive  with  the  nature 
Poe's literary  an^  powers  of  that  genius.  His  criti 
cal  writings,  earnest  and  vigorous  as 
they  were,  did  not  express  his  largest  self.  They 
performed  a  useful  service  in  banishing  many 
poor  books  and  weak  writers  from  the  field  of 
American  literature  ;  though  too  often  prejudiced, 
they  were  never  timid,  and  they  called  attention 
to  some  of  the  deeper  elements  of  literary  crea 
tion  at  a  time  when  superficiality  was  too  com 
mon.  These  criticisms,  written  before  the  mas 
ters  had  done  their  best  work,  and  while  the  mists 
of  sentimentalism  temporarily  shrouded  the  lit 
erary  landscape,  were  necessarily  of  little  perma 
nent  value.  The  papers  on  chirography,  cryptog 
raphy,  the  "  automaton  chess-player,"  and  similar 
themes,  were  of  course  the  by-play  of  an  active 
mind,  possessed  of  unusual  powers  of  analysis. 
Poe's  fame  rests  upon  his  tales  and  poems  ;  and 
the  essential  nature  of  the  best  of  them  is  the 
same.  They  deal  with  weird  and  ethereal  beauty ; 
with  the  desolate  sadness  of  a  half-despairing  and 
half-hoping  soul  before  the  iron  gate  of  death; 
with  the  strange  lights  and  unworldly  sounds  of 
the  realm  of  pure  romance ;  with  the  parable  of 
shadow  and  the  fable  of  silence.  Theirs  is  not 


Edgar  Allan  Poe.  ioi' 


the  high  philosophy  of  life,  the  '  mafily,"  e 
self-reliance  of  Saxon  independence.  '  Had  Poe 
striven  often  to  enter  Hawthorne's  domain,  the 
allegory  of  conscience,  his  failures  would  have 
been  speedy  ;  had  he  sought  to  repeat  the  hated 
Longfellow's  ''seven  voices  of  sympathy,"  the 
result  would  have  been  grotesque.  We  cannot 
all  do  all  things.  Poe  knew  what  he  could  do- 
and  did  it.  The  knowledge  and  the  choice  were 
so  instinctive,  and  the  expression  was  so  com 
plete,  that  never  did  the  spontaneity  which  is 
the  soul  of  art  make  more  manifest  exhibition 
than  in  his  best  prose  and  verse.  I  am  far  from 
saying  that  Poe  never  over-estimated  his  powers  : 
he  absurdly  exalted  his  "  prose-poem  "  of  "  Eu 
reka  "  ;  he  was  apparently  blind  to  his  failures  in 
the  department  of  the  would-be  humorous  ;  and 
he  even  prided  himself  on  some  seemingly  learned 
review  which  was  really  the  product  of  a  jour 
nalist's  "  cram."  But  it  is  to  be  remembered  that 
the  final  edition  of  Poe's  writings  includes  nearly 
all  of  his  hack-work  —  literary  criticisms  of  ephem 
eral  and  valueless  books,  personal  sketches  of 
temporary  interest,  newspaper  discussions  of 
mechanical  curiosities  of  the  day,  and  stories  and 
sketches  written  by  a  poor  man  for  daily  bread. 
The  wonder  is  that  the  average  excellence  is 
so  high.  Seldom  is  the  task-work  of  an  editor 
or  "  regular  contributor"  so  conscientiously  per 
formed  and  so  closely  related  to  the  real  mind  of 
the  writer.  Poe  is  not  wholly  to  be  blamed  for 
his  poverty,  nor  for  the  passage  of  time,  nor  for 


'PO2    •  .-:;..  '   ~<  American  Literature. 


qf/Ariierican  literature  when  he  wrote; 
ancl  the"  'fact*  is  'indisputable  that  he  measured  his 
mind  and  entered  his  true  field  with  a  wisdom  as 
confident  as  that  which  dominated  the  life-work  of 
Emerson  or  Hawthorne.  Their  serenity  toward 
the  things  just  beyond  he  utterly  lacked  ;  but  in 
his  own  domain  he  was  a  conscious  monarch.  - 
This  self-confidence  of  mind  is  in  itself,  when  jus 
tified  by  achievement,  a  mark  of  genius  ;  the 
fated  sky  gives  free  scope. 

There  are  two  measures  of  literary  success,  the 
one  relative  and  the  other  absolute.  Shakespeare 
The  measure  of  'ls  Shakespeare  because  he  rises  above 
Poe's  Success,  ^g  worid's  best  chorus  :  Homer, 
^Eschylus,  Sophocles,  Virgil,  Dante,  Milton, 
Goethe.  But  Coleridge,  in  "The  Ancient  Mari 
ner,"  attains  a  single  intense  success  coextensive 
with  the  ambition  of  the  poem0  If  the  estimate 
of  an  author's  rank  is  in  the  large  sense  relative 
and  comparative,  we  properly  consider  his  breadth 
of  theme,  varied  aims  and  triumphs,  relations  to 
the  problems  of  the  world  and  the  universe  of 
matter  and  mind.  By  such  an  estimate  we  view  a 
Shakespeare,  a  Beethoven,  a  Raphael  ;  and  there 
can  be  no  question  that  the  world's  masters  in 
every  art  are  those  of  depth  and  breadth  and 
height  of  thought  and  work.  But  the  place  of  a 
flower  or  a  gem  is  as  legitimate  and  true  as  that  of 
a  mountain  or  a  Parthenon.  If  the  artistic  act  fitly 
follows  the  artistic  thought,  the  resultant  success 
and  the  attendant  pleasure  are  not  the  less  abso- 


Edgar  Allan  Poe.  103 

lute  because  relatively  less  great.  Considering 
that  which  Poe  sought,  in  a  part  of  soul-land 
where  few  have  dwelt  and  sung  as  did  he,  it  must 
readily  be  admitted  that  his  poetic  attainment  fol 
lowed  his  poetic  search.  "Very  valueless  verses  " 
have  his  poems  been  called  by  a  realistic  critic  ; 
and  so  they  are,  when  compared  with  Emerson's 
or  Wordsworth's  apt  answers  to  the  riddle  of  life. 
But  the  shade  of  Emerson  might  now  say  to  the 
shade  of  Poe : 

"  The  self-same  Power  that  brought  me  there  brought  you." 

The  field  of  thought  and  genius  is  broad  enough 
for  all  three  poets  ;  there  is  in  it  a  place  not  only 
for  Yarrow  and  Musketaquid  but  for  "an  ulti 
mate  dim  Thule," 

"  A  wild  weird  clime  that  lieth,  sublime, 
Out  of  Space — out  of  Time." 

Over  the  whole  earthly  life  of  Poe  hung  an 
eternal  vision  of  pure  beauty.  If  the  vision  were 
in  fleshly  form,  he  addressed  it  with  the  A  poet  of 
reverence  of  a  worshipper  entering  some  beauty, 
classic  temple,  as  in  the  familiar  fifteen  lines 
forming  the  well-known  lyric  "  To  Helen  "  : 

Helen,  thy  beauty  is  to  me 

Like  those  Nicean  barks  of  yore, 
That  gently,  o'er  a  perfumed  sea, 

The  weary,  wayworn  wanderer  bore 

To  his  own  native  shore. 


IO4  American  Literature. 

On  desperate  seas  long  wont  to  roam, 
Thy  hyacinth  hair,  thy  classic  face, 

Thy  Naiad  airs  have  brought  me  home 
To  the  glory  that  was  Greece, 
And  the  grandeur  that  was  Rome. 

Lo !  in  yon  brilliant  window  niche 

How  statue-like  I  see  thee  stand, 
The  agate  lamp  within  thy  hand  ! 

Ah,  Psyche,  from  the  regions  which 

Are  Holy  Land  ! 

Notwithstanding  some  alterations  in  later  life, 
this  chaste  and  round  lyric  belongs  to  the  poet's 
earliest  years.  Its  tone  of  personal  address  is 
apparent  at  a  glance ;  neither  Poe  nor  the  major 
ity  of  the  world's  poets  sang  of  intellectual  ab 
stractions  or  mere  capital-letter  personifications  of 
imaginary  beauty.  But  here,  as  in  so  many  of 
Poe's  poems,  the  earthly  form  is  made  to  assume 
an  unearthly  and  half-spiritual  guise ;  upon  the 
material  and  fleshly  there  falls  a  light  from  an 
immaterial  world.  Beauty  and  love  are  all-in-all, 
but  the  beauty  is  not  of  the  court  or  the  street, 
nor  is  the  love  that  of  this  middle-earth  alone. 
No  writer  of  his  time  ever  fell  prostrate  upon  the 
grave  in  morbid  desolation  so  utter ;  but  neverthe 
less  the  poet's  eye  turned  with  clear  vision  "To 
One  in  Paradise"  : 

Thou  wast  all  that  to  me,  love, 

For  which  my  soul  did  pine — 
A  green  isle  in  the  sear  love, 

A  fountain  and  a  shrine, 
All  wreathed  with  fairy  fruits  and  flowers, 

And  all  the  flowers  were  mine. 


Edgar  Allan  Poe.  105 

Ah,  dream  too  bright  to  last ! 

Ah,  starry  Hope  !  that  didst  arise 
But  to  be  overcast ! 

A  voice  from  out  the  Future  cries, 
"  On,  on  !  " — but  o'er  the  Past 

(Dim  gulf !)  my  spirit  hovering  lies 
Mute,  motionless,  aghast ! 

For  alas  !  alas  !  with  me 

The  light  of  Life  is  o'er ! 

No  more — no  more — no  more — 
(Such  language  holds  the  solemn  sea 

To  the  sands  upon  the  shore) 
Shall  bloom  the  thunder-blasted  tree, 

Or  the  stricken  eagle  soar  ! 

And  all  my  days  are  trances, 

And  all  my  nightly  dreams 
Are  where  thy  dark  eye  glances, 

And  where  thy  footstep  gleams — 
In  what  ethereal  dances, 

By  what  eternal  streams. 

He  sings  not  only  of  the  earthly  presence  and  of 
the  sight  of  the  far-sundered  one  in  paradise,  ever 
away  from  the  light  of  this  life,  but  also  of  a 
union  of  souls  so  perfect  and  eternal  that  material 
earth  and  spiritual  heaven  are  indistinguishable 
and  at  one.  From  the  reverential  tribute  "  To 
Helen"  and  the  rapt  and  constant  vision  of  the 
ethereal  dance  and  the  eternal  stream,  he  turns 
once  more  in  "  Annabel  Lee  "  to  a  love  that  is 
more  than  love — more  than  the  poor  temporary 
physical  love  of  earthly  space  and  time,  and  be 
longing  instead  to  the  illimitable  land  of  "  death 
less  love's  acclaims  " : 


io6  American  Literature. 

It  was  many  and  many  a  year  ago, 

In  a  kingdom  by  the  sea, 
That  a  maiden  there  lived  whom  you  may  know 

By  the  name  of  Annabel  Lee  ; 
And  this  maiden  she  lived  with  no  other  thought 

Than  to  love  and  be  loved  by  me. 

I  was  a  child  and  she  was  a  child, 

In  this  kingdom  by  the  sea  : 
But  we  loved  with  a  love  that  was  more  than  love — 

I  and  my  Annabel  Lee  ; 
With  a  love  that  the  winged  seraphs  of  heaven 

Coveted  her  and  me. 

And  this  was  the  reason  that,  long  ago, 

In  this  kingdom  by  the  sea, 
A  wind  blew  out  of  a  cloud,  chilling 

My  beautiful  Annabel  Lee  ; 
So  that  her  highborn  kinsmen  came 

And  bore  her  away  from  me, 
To  shut  her  up  in  a  sepulchre 

In  this  kingdom  by  the  sea. 

The  angels,  not  half  so  happy  in  heaven, 

Went  envying  her  and  me — 
Yes ! — that  was  the  reason  (as  all  men  know, 

In  this  kingdom  by  the  sea) 
That  the  wind  came  out  of  the  cloud  by  night, 

Chilling  and  killing  my  Annabel  Lee. 

But  our  love  it  was  stronger  by  far  than  the  love 

Of  those  who  were  older  than  we — 

Of  many  far  wiser  than  we — • 
And  neither  the  angels  in  heaven  above, 

Nor  the  demons  down  under  the  sea, 
Can  ever  dissever  my  soul  from  the  soul 

Of  the  beautiful  Annabel  Lee  : 


Edgar  Allan  Poe.  107 

For  the  moon  never  beams,  without  bringing  me  dreams 

Of  the  beautiful  Annabel  Lee ; 
And  the  stars  never  rise,  but  I  feel  the  bright  eyes 

Of  the  beautiful  Annabel  Lee  ; 
And  so,  all  the  night-tide,  I  lie  down  by  the  side 
Of  my  darling, — my  darling, — my  life  and  my  bride, 

In  her  sepulchre  there  by  the  sea, 

In  her  tomb  by  the  side  of  the  sea. 

I  have  reprinted  entire  these  familiar  poems — 
of  which  the  first  is  artistically  the  best  and  the 
third  the  most  famous — so  that  the  reader  may 
follow  them  in  their  order  of  composition,  and 
thus  behold  in  symmetrical  arrangement  the  three 
chief -planes  from  which  Poe  viewed  the  mystery 
of  life  and  death.  "To  Helen"  dates  from  his 
earliest  years,  while  "  Annabel  Lee,"  undoubtedly 
written  in  memory  of  his  wife,  was  almost  his  own 
death-song.  To  claim  that  these  three  severed 
pieces  were  written  as  the  poet's  cumulative  credo 
would  be  nonsense  ;  but  it  is  plain  truth  to  assert 
that  they  form  a  key  to  Poe's  chief  mood  of  song. 

This  highest  mood,  however,  was  not  all-prev 
alent.  It  dominates  these  three  poems,  unsur 
passed  in  essential  merit  by  anything  he  ever 
wrote  in  verse ;  and  it  dominates  the  tale  of 
"  Ligeia,"  which  stands  with  "  The  Fall  of  the 
House  of  Usher"  at  the  head  of  his  prose.  The 
will  dieth  not;  God  himself  is  but  a  The  eternity  of 
great  will ;  man  by  the  strength  of  will  the  individual 
conquers  death  that  conquers  all  else. 
This  is  the  answer  to  the  riddle  of  Poe,  and  to 
the  vaster  enigma  of  his  world.  But  Poe's  high 


loS  American  Literature. 

creed  was  better  than  his  practice,  in  life  and 
in  verse.  His  own  will  was  sadly  fluctuant, 
and  two-thirds  of  his  well-known  woes  were 
born  of  his  personal  weakness.  So,  too,  in  his 
poems  the  note  of  clear  and  resistless  assertion  is 
often  changed  to  that  of  wailing  and  ineffectual 
lament.  The  ethereal  quality  of  his  genius  soared 
A  poet  of  above  the  heart  of  common  humanity, 
weird  woe.  j-^j.  was  too  often  caught  by  rough 
winds  and  dashed  helpless  to  the  earth.  There 
fore  we  have  poems  of  the  storm-swept  desolate 
grave,  or  even  of  the  charnel-house ;  poems  of 
melodious  but  utterly  melancholy  tears  and  sighs, 
— of  a  despair  that  veers  between  the  shuddering 
thought  that  mayhap  death  is  very  death,  and 
the  welcome  idea  that  the  dreamless  sleep  of  for- 
getfulness  is  best  after  all.  And  yet  Poe  turned 
again  and  again  from  the  "nevermore"  of  "  The 
Raven,"  from  "  the  tragedy  '  Man '  and  its  hero 
the  Conqueror  Worm," 

"  From  Hell  unto  a  high  estate  far  up  within  the  Heaven — 
From  grief  and  groan,  to  a  golden  throne,  beside  the  King 
of  Heaven." 

Less  than  two  hundred  small  pages  include  the 
poetical  product  of  Poe.  Upon  his  forty  poems, 
The  singer  and  however,  rests  a  reputation  which 
has  slowly  and  steadily  advanced  in 
many  lands,  without  successful  challenge  from 
the  critics  or  the  public,  during  the  forty  years 
since  his  death.  Their  obvious  and  at  times 
painful  limitations  have  by  contrast  displayed 


Edgar  Allan  Poe.  109 

their  conspicuous  merits.  The  maker  and  the 
product  have  survived  the  attacks  of  hostile  critics 
and  the  still  more  foolish  and  injurious  praises 
bestowed  by  the  indiscriminate  adulation  of  those 
who  have  made  "  the  Poe  craze  "  a  term  of  mer 
ited  contempt.  The  lonely  separation  of  his 
verse,  in  the  history  of  American  song  ;  its  mel 
ancholy  imagination  and  its  romantic  fancy;  its 
metrical  originality  and  beauty  and  its  mastery  of 
assonance  and  alliteration,  have  given  it  a  place 
and  fame,  notwithstanding  its  lack  of  the  moral 
might  of  the  masters.  Poe  could  not  give  us  one 
of  the  long  poems  he  affected  to  despise  ;  he  was 
incapable  of  success  in  the  use  of  our  noblest 
English  measure,  the  iambic  unrhymed  pentam 
eter  or  "  blank  verse  "  ;  and  he  too  often  forgot 
—though  at  his  best  he  remembered — the  words 
of  a  poet  as  great  as  himself  and  in  some  respects 
very  like  him  : 

"  Beauty  is  truth,  truth  beauty, — that  is  all 
Ye  know  on  earth,  and  all  ye  need  to  know." 

All  this,  however,  does  not  deny  or  diminish  the 
legitimate  pleasure  with  which  we  read  the  vague 
fantasies  of  "  Ulalume  ;  "  the  Tennysonian  allegory 
of  "  The  Haunted  Palace  ;  "  the  pallid  and  silent 
and  unhuman  apostrophe  to  "  The  Sleeper," 
environed  by  ghosts  and  shadows  of  No-man's- 
land  ;  the  obvious  tone-pictures  of  "The  Bells"  ; 
or  the  cadenced  story  of  "  The  Raven."  The 
commanding  popularity  of  the  last  named  poem, 
among  its  author's  works,  is  due  to  its  apt  combi- 


no  A merican  L ^terat^lre. 

nation  of  things  said  and  things  suggested,  of 
pathos  and  half-humorous  lightness  of  touch,  of 
story  for  the  people  and  parable  for  the  elect. 

The  originality  of  Poe's  product  explains  his 
fame  in  America  and  in  Europe.  His  genius  and 
Poe>s  its  expression  were  separate  and  indi- 

originaiity.  v;dual.  The  peculiar  type  of  the  Amer 
ican  mind  shows  itself  more  or  less  all  through  the 
national  literature  ;  but  not  many  of  our  authors, 
like  Poe,  Hawthorne,  Emerson,  Cooper,  and 
Whitman,  stand  isolated  and  significant.  A 
Coleridge  or  Tieck  may  have  influenced  Poe  or 
Hawthorne,  as  Carlyle  affected  Emerson  and 
Whitman  ;  every  author  learns  something  from 
his  predecessors  ;  but  these  five  American  names 
stand  for  peculiar  powers  in  separated  fields.' 
New-world  men  and  nature  were  shown  to  the 
novel-reading  public  in  the  works  of  Cooper ; 
but  his  national  tone,  characteristic  as  it  is,  may 
be  deemed  less  significant,  in  one  sense,  than  the 
might  of  genius  which  makes  itself  independent 
of  time  and  place,  while  freely  availing  itself  of 
both.  I  am  far  from  stating  that  these  five  men 
are  of  equal  rank,  nor  do  I  claim  that  significance 
is  the  only  mark  of  success  ;  but  it  is  a  conspicu 
ous  and  suggestive  mark.  These  men  have 
deeply  affected  their  students  in  many  lands ; 
they  have  aroused  the  imitation  of  literary 
schools,  or,  like  Hawthorne,  have  left  their  would- 
be  followers  in  despair  of  learning  their  secret. 

Poe's  originality  of  mind  and  note  appears  even 
in  his  poetical  failures,  such  as  the  long  and 


Edgar  Allan  Poe.  1 1 1 

dreary  and  often  obscure  "  Tamerlane  "  and  "  Al 
Aaraaf,"  or  the   trashy  verses  on  "  Israfel,"  which  ..'._ 
form  so  absurd  a  contrast  to  the  lovely  text  from 
the  Koran  which  inspired  their  thought. 

His  cheapest  jingles  have  a  quality  which  is  dis 
tinctly  his  own  : 

Tottering  above 

In  her  highest  noon, 

The  enamored  moon 
Blushes  with  love, 

While  to  listen,  the  red  levin 

(With  the  rapid  Pleiads,  even, 

Which  were  seven), 

Pauses  in  heaven. 

And  never  a  flake 
That  the  vapor  can  make 
With  the  moon-tints  of  purple  and  pearl, 
Can  vie  with  the  modest  Eulalie's  most  unregarded  curl, 
Can  compare  with  the  bright-eyed  Eulalie's  most  humble  and 
careless  curl. 

Some  have  left  the  cool  glade,  and 

Have  slept  with  the  bee — 
Arouse  them  ;  my  maiden, 

On  moorland  and  lea. 

The  sickness,  the  nausea — 

The  pitiless  pain — 
Have  ceased,  with  the  fever 

That  maddened  my  brain — 
With  the  fever  called  "  Living  " 

That  burned  in  my  brain. 

And  oh  !  of  all  tortures 

That  torture  the  worst 
Has  abated — the  terrible 

Torture  of  thirst, 


ii2  American  Literature. 

For  the  naphthaline  river 

Of  Passion  accurst : — 
I  have  drank  of  a  water 

That  quenches  all  thirst,  etc. 

This  is  doggerel,  but  it  is  Poe's  special  dog 
gerel.  The  ease  and  persistency  with  which  he 
has  been  parodied,  and  the  failure  which  has  met 
the  efforts  of  his  more  serious  imitators,  are 
sufficient  proof  that  all  his  verse,  in  its  three 
clearly-marked  divisions  of  good,  bad,  and  indif 
ferent,  is  impressed  with  his  special  seal.  The 
thought  and  the  voice,  the  light  and  the  touch, 
are  unmistakable.  "  Le  sue  piccole  ballate  sono 
gioielli  poetici,  ma  anche  in  esse  domina  quel 
tedizim  vita,  quella  malinconia  insanabile,  diffusa, 
come  lume  lunare,  su  tutte  le  sue  creazione."  * 

From  the  small  and  homogeneous  body  of  Poe's 
verse  two  poems  stand  clearly  forth,  marked  with 
a  general  favor  they  are  unlikely  to  lose.  "  The 
Bells  "  and  "  The  Raven  "  are  in  my  opinion  of 
merit  inferior  to  that  of  the  trio  of  poems  previ 
ously  reprinted  in  this  chapter.  But  their  qual 
ities  are  such  as  to  insure  lasting  popularity  in  a 
world  where  the  majority  of  readers  prefer  a  lyric 
to  an  epic,  and  sing  a  song  v/hile  they  leave  a 
dr.ama  unread.  Poetic  conciseness  and  unity  of 
thought  were  prime  articles  in  Poe's  creed,  and  in 
these  original  lyrics  his  practice  well  followed  his 
principle.  The  heaviest  ear  can  follow  the  music 

"The  Bells."     °f.     "  The        Bells'"       EIld       the        dulleSt 

mind   can   perceive  the  varied  but  pro- 

*  Gustavo  Strafforello,  "  Letteratura  Americana."     Milano,  1884;  p.  14. 


Edgar  Allan  Poe.  113 

gressive  suggestions  of  the  poem ;  while  the 
reader  of  finer  tastes  need  not  complain  of  any 
lack  of  refinement  and  beauty  in  the  metrical  and 
verbal  workmanship.  As  an  extended  illustration 
of  onomatopoeia  "  The  Bells,"  as  Mr.  Stoddard  has 
said,  need  not  fear  comparison  with  "  Alexander's 
Feast," — a  wonder  in  its  day  but  no  marvel  now. 
As  for  "  The  Raven,"  it  is  obvious  that  our 
"  Stygian  American  "  never  measured 

J  fe  .  The  Raven." 

his  powers  more  exactly  than  in  its 
famous  stanzas.  Its  variorum  editor  boldly 
declares  that  it  "  may  safely  be  termed  the 
most  popular  lyrical  poem  in  the  world."  A 
dozen  rival  candidates  at  once  occur,  beginning 
with  Gray's  "  Elegy ; "  but  there  need  be 
no  discussion  of  the  wide-spread  favor  which 
the  later  lyric  enjoys.  It  is  "  recited "  by  the 
schoolboy,  and  its  melodious  earthly  despair 
inspired  the  serene  heavenly  contrast  of  the 
recluse  Rossetti's  best  poem,  "  The  Blessed  Dam- 
ozel."  Mrs.  Browning,  to  whom  it  was  manifestly 
indebted  in  form  and  word,  bore  testimony  to  the 
"  sensation  "  made  in  England  by  its  gruesome- 
ness  and  its  melody ;  and  its  "  power  which  is 
felt,"  to  borrow  her  own  words,  has  not  faded  with 
time.  The  genesis  of  the  poem,  as  elaborately 
and  doubtless  in  the  main  truly  described  by  its 
writer,  fully  accounts  for  its  mechanical  excel 
lence  ;  while  its  spirit  is  that  in  which  Poe  chiefly 
lived.  Its  "  midnight  dreary  "  was  his  own  most 
characteristic  hour ;  and  its  irregular  and  ineffect 
ual  struggle  with  the  inevitable  was  thoroughly 


ii4  American  Literature. 

representative  of  one  of  Poe's  frequent  reflections, 
in  which  he  consoled  himself  for  personal  failure 
by  the  thought  of  the  "  unmerciful  disaster "  of 
destiny.  But  the  spirit  and  tone  of  the  poem 
were  controlled  rigidly,  from  first  to  last,  by  the 
intellectual  force  and  ratiocinative  grip  which  Poe 
displayed  so  constantly  in  all  his  literary  life. 
Whatever  the  limitations  of  his  mental  powers, 
those  powers  which  he  possessed  were  used  with 
the  utmost  sanity  of  deliberately  measured 
strength.  The  best  illustration  of  this  fact  is  to 
be  found  in  the  apt  introduction  of  humor  in  cer 
tain  lines  of  "  The  Raven," — a  flicker  which 
admirably  deepens  the  shadows  darkening  toward 
the  close.  It  is  the  fashion  to  say  that  humor  is 
utterly  lacking  in  Poe ;  but  the  statement  cannot 
be  accepted,  as  regards  either  his  verse  or  his 
prose.  This  quality  was  not  his  strongest,  but  it 
was  occasionally  used  with  good  effect  in  height 
ening  the  grotesque.  Indeed,  a  romancer  desti 
tute  of  a  sense  of  humor  would  almost  be  an 
impossibility  ;  he  must  play  with  his  subject  and 
his  readers,  as  Poe  does  here,  before  he  permits 
the  red  glare  to  rise  or  the  darkening  final  shadow 
to  fall.  His  constructive  art,  like  that  of  the 
painter,  must  ever  be  watched,  if  it  would  produce 
a  result  which,  like  <l  The  Raven,"  contains  within 
itself  an  element  of  perennial  life. 

Midway  between    the  verse   and   the   prose  of 
>f    Poe  stand  the  "  Scenes    from  '  Politian,' 
an  unpublished   drama,"  which    have    al 
ways  been  retained  among  the  author's  collected 


Edgar  Allan  Poe.  115 

writings.  These  fragments  of  a  never-completed 
play  have  received  little  praise,  even  from  the 
poet's  most  constant  and  all-absorbing  coterie  of 
worshippers.  It  may  be  said,  however,  at  the 
least,  that  they  do  not  fall  below  the  average  of 
the  weak  and  unimportant  contributions  which 
America  has  made  to  the  department  of  literature 
which  they  profess  to  enter.  Poe's  mind  was 
essentially  incapable  of  producing  a  long-sustained 
effort  in  either  prose  or  verse  ;  as  a  rule  he  con 
temptuously  abstained  from  essays  toward  the 
"  large  manner,"  and  assuredly  we  need  not  regret 
this  fact,  in  view  of  his  failures  in  "  Al  Aaraaf," 
"  Tamerlane,"  "  Eureka,"  and  "  Arthur  Gordon 
Pym."  What  Poe  would  have  made  of  "  Poli- 
tian,"  had  he  completed  it,  I  do  not  know ;  the 
chances  of  success  were  against  him.  But  I  rank 
these  existing  fragments  as  the  best  of  his  three 
poems  of  more  than  lyrical  aim.  They  are  some 
times  grandiloquent,  but  they  mouth  well,  and 
often  show  more  than  superficial  attractiveness  of 
words,  as  in — 

A  spectral  figure,  solemn,  and  slow,  and  noiseless — 
Like  the  grim  shadow  Conscience,  solemn  and  noiseless ; 

I  heard  not  any  voice  except  thine  own, 
And  the  echo  of  thine  own ; 

Methinks  the  air 

Is  balmier  now  than  it  was  wont  to  be — 
Rich  melodies  are  floating  in  the  winds — 
A  rarer  loveliness  bedecks  the  earth — 
And  with  a  holier  lustre  the  quiet  moon 
Sitteth  in  Heaven.* 

*  Poe  never  learned  to  punctuate ;  and  here,  as  elsewhere,  it  is  an  annoy 
ance  to  follow  the  established  text. 


n6  American  Literature. 

The  subjective  element  clearly  appears  in  the 
following  longer  extract,  the  spirit  of  which  is 
closely  accordant  with  that  of  several  of  the 
author's  best  lyrics, — indeed,  with  the  dominant 
thought  of  his  life  : 

Politian.     Speak  not  to  me  of  glory  ! 
I  hate — I  loathe  the  name  ;  I  do  abhor 
The  unsatisfactory  and  ideal  thing. 
Art  thou  not  Lalage,  and  I  Politian  ? 
Do  I  not  love — art  thou  not  beautiful — 
What  need  we  more  ?     Ha  !  glory  ! — now  speak  not  of  it : 
By  all  I  hold  most  sacred  and  most  solemn — 
By  all  my  wishes  now — my  fears  hereafter — 
By  all  I  scorn  on  earth  and  hope  in  heaven — 
There  is  no  deed  I  would  more  glory  in, 
Than  in  thy  cause  to  scoff  at  this  same  glory 
And  trample  it  under  foot.     What  matters  it — 
What  matters  it,  my  fairest,  and  my  best, 
That  we  go  down  unhonored  and  forgotten 
Into  the  dust — so  we  descend  together, 
Descend  together — and  then — and  then  perchance — 

Lalage.     Why  dost  thou  pause,  Politian  ? 

Politian.     And  then  perchance 
Arise  together,  Lalage,  and  roam 
The  starry  and  quiet  dwellings  of  the  blest. 
And  still — 

Lalage.     Why  dost  thou  pause,  Politian  ? 

Politian.     And  still  together — together. 

Lalage.     Now,  Earl  of  Leicester  ! 
Thou  lovest  me,  and  in  my  heart  of  hearts 

I  feel  thou  lovest  me  truly. 

/ 

Of  all  the  prose  tales  of  Poe  the  one  most  dear 

The  prose   to  him  was  "  Ligeia  "  ;  and  in  it  the  reader 

passes  naturally  from  one  great  division 

of  the  author's  writings  to  the  other.     The  general 


Edgar  Allan  Poe.  117 

theme  is  here  unchanged;  the  deliberate  prose 
has  somewhat  of  the  melody  of  verse ;  and  here, 
as  before,  the  living  heart  beats  rebelliously  and 
at  last  triumphantly  against  the  bars  of  the  dying 
body.  The  tale,  according  to  the  author's  own 
statement  in  manuscript,  appended  to  a  copy  in 
the  possession  of  Mr.  John  H.  Ingram,* 
was  suggested  by  a  dream,  "  in  which  the 
eyes  of  the  heroine  produced  the  intense  effect 
described  in  the  fourth  paragraph  of  the  work." 
Mr.  Ingram  aptly  adds  :  "  A  theme  more  con 
genial  to  the  dream-haunted  brain  of  Poe  could1 
scarcely  be  devised  ;  and  in  his  exposition  of  the 
thoughts  suggested  by  its  application  he  has  been 
more  than  usually  successful.  The  failure  of 
Death  ta  annihilate  Will  was,  indeed,  a  sugges 
tion  that  the  poet — dreadingly,  despairingly, 
familiar  as  he  was  with  charnel  secrets — could  not 
fail  to  grasp  at  with  the  energy  of  hope,  and 
adorn  with  the  funereal  flowers  of  his  grave-nour 
ished  fantasy.'*  In  Poe's  statements  concerning 
the  powers  and  the  place  of  the  post-mortem  soul 
there  is  at  times  an  over-intensity  of  assertion  that 
seems  almost  hysterical,  and  that  is  far  removed 
from  the  serenity  of  settled  faith.  But 

"There  lives  more  faith  in  honest  doubt, 
Believe  me,  than  in  half  the  creeds." 

There    is    a    stolid  fixity    of   faith   that    is  unre 
flecting    and    unprepared    for    questionings;    and 

*  Ingram's  "Edgar  Allan  Poe:  his  Life,  Letters,  and  Opinions":  L,  ice 
London  :  1880. 


nS  American  Literature. 

there  is,  on  the  other  hand,  a  storm-tossed  incerti 
tude  that  rises  per  aspera  ad  astra,  and  at  length 
exclaims,  with  a  confident  "  Eureka":  "All  is 
Life — Life — Life  within  Life — the  less  within  the 
greater  and  all  within  the  Spirit  Divine."  * 

Poe  has  left  on  record,  with  his  usual  italicized 
positiveness,  his  views  of  the  difference  between 
poetry  and  romance.  These  views  have  interest 
as  we  turn  to  "Ligeia"  and  "The  Fall  of  the 
House  of  Usher,"  his  strongest  stones :  "  A  poem, 
in  my  opinion,  is  opposed  to  a  work  of  science  by 
having,  for  its  immediate  object,  pleasure,  not 
truth ;  to  romance,  by  having,  for  its  object,  an 
indefinite  instead  of  a  definite  pleasure,  being  a 
poem  only  so  far  as  this  object  is  attained ; 
romance  presenting  perceptible  images  with  defi 
nite,  poetry  with  indefinite  sensations,  to  which 
end  music  is  an  essential,  since  the  comprehension 
of  sweet  sound  is  our  most  indefinite  conception. 
Music,  when  combined  with  a  pleasurable  idea,  is 
poetry ;  music,  without  the  idea,  is  simply  music  ; 
the  idea,  without  the  music,  is  prose,  from  its  very 
definitiveness."  f 

This  statement,  which  Poe  at  some  other  times 
modified  or  failed  to  observe,  is  obviously  open  to 
Definiteness  criticism  in  several  respects.  But  its 
of  Poe's  tales.  j(jea  ^^  romance  should  present  per 
ceptible  images  with  definite  sensations  is  one  that 
Poe  scrupulously  observed  in  his  best  tales,  such 
as  the  two  just  named,  "The  Gold  Bug,"  "The 

*  "Eureka";  complete  works  (1884  edition),  v.,  150. 
t  Letter  to  B ,"  works,  vi.,  571. 


Edgar  Allan  Poe.  119 

Black  Cat,"  "The  Pit  and  the  Pendulum,"  "The 
Facts  in  the  Case  of  M.  Valdemar,"  "The  Mys 
tery  of  Marie  Roget,"  "The  Murders  in  the  Rue 
Morgue."  Upon  their  unity  of  thought  and  pains 
taking  vividness  of  impression  depends  their  suc 
cess.  However  improbable,  unworldly,  or  super 
natural  was  Poe's  theme,  the  figures  were  pre 
sented  with  the  clear-cut  distinctness  of  a  silhou 
ette.  No  "realist"  of  the  next  generation  was 
ever  more  zealous  and  fastidious  in  the  selection 
and  arrangement  of  details.  As  far  as  verisimilH 
tude  is  concerned  this  weird  and  at  times  appar-J 
ently  distraught  romancer  stands  in  the  company 
led  by  the  author  of  "Robinson  Crusoe"  himself. 
The  romance  lay  in  his  thought,  but  he  well  knew 
that  a  deliberate  literary  method,  in  great  and  in 
small,  was  needed  before  the  reader  could  receive 
"definite  sensations  from  perceptible  images." 

This  method  was  often  apparent  in  many 
details,  despite  Poe's  great  unevenness  in  literary 
style — from  the  choice  of  titles  to  the  arrange 
ment  of  concluding  paragraphs.  Such  phrases  as 
"The  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher," 

Ine  rail  or 

'The  Imp  of  the  Perverse,"  "The  the  House  of 
Masque  of  the  Red  Death,"  "  Some 
Words  with  a  Mummy,"  "  The  Murders  in  the 
Rue  Morgue,"  "The  Pit  and  the  Pendulum," 
"  The  Gold  Bug,"  and  "  The  Island  of  the  Fay," 
arouse  attention  in  themselves,  irrespective  of 
what  follows  ;  and  remain  in  the  memory  as  repre 
sentatives  of  original  and  definite  impressions. 
Less  poetic,  but  sufficiently  clever  to  serve  the 


I2O  American  Literature. 

purpose  of  apt  introductions,  are  the  more  obvi 
ously  readable  titles  of  sensational  stories  like 
"  MS.  Found  in  a  Bottle,"  or  "  The  Unparalleled 
Adventures  of  One  Hans  Pfaal."  Poe  did  not 
depend,  however,  upon  titles  only;  sometimes  an 
artistic  tale  was  ill-labelled  ;  and  again  so  rhyth 
mical  a  collection  of  words  as  "  The  Cask  of 
Amontillado  "  formed  the  prelude  to  ten  pages  of 
sub-freshman  silliness.  It  is  pleasanter  to  think 
of  Poe's  full  triumphs  thaa  of  his  weak  failures. 
"  The  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher  "  is,  in  its  way, 
a  triumph  of  art.  An  intensely  dramatic  tale, 
involving  both  mind  and  matter,  it  employs  the 
full  powers  of  art  to  draw  from  dark  and  myste 
rious  scenes  and  deeds  a  very  definite  and  impres 
sive  literary  picture.  Language,  as  the  chief 
means  of  intellectual  impression,  was  so  used  by 
Poe  that  it  imitated  some  of  the  effects  of  paint 
ing,  of  sculpture,  and  of  wordless  music. 

The  chief  divisions  of  Poe's  tales,  natural  or 
supernatural,  are  those  of  life  battling  with  death  ; 
of  remorseful,  overwhelming  tragedy ;/ 
°^  retribution ;  of  ratiocination ;  of 
pseudo-scientific  realism ;  and  of  hu 
mor.  In  these  divisions,  "  Ligeia,"  "The  Fall 
of  the  House  of  Usher,"  "Hop-Frog,"  "  The 
Gold-Bug,"  -The  Unparalleled  Adventures  of 
One  Hans  Pfaal,"  and  "The  System  of  Doctor 
Tarr  and  Professor  Fether,"  may  be  taken  as 
representatives.  The  verisimilitude  of  the  unim 
portant  long  story,  "Arthur  Gordon  Pym,"  is 
occasionally  overshadowed  by  Coleridgean  mys- 


Edgar  Allan  Poe.  121 

tical  tints  ;  while  the  "  prose-poem  "  of  "  Eureka  " 
is  a  dream  of  the  universe,  in  the  waking  sleep  of 
an  imaginative  genius  who  has  dabbled  in  science. 
The  slight  value  of  both — and  to  them  may  be 
added  Poe's  third  long  piece  of  prose,  "  The  Jour 
nal  of  Julius  Rodman  " — is  easily  outweighed  by 
any  one  of  the  more  characteristic  tales 
mentioned  above.  Dismissing  also  the  dismally 

••  Arthur  Gordon  unsuccess^ul  and  ephemeral  "  humor- 
Pym,"§ "  Eureka,"  ous  "  sketches  of  the  "  X-inpf  a  Para- 

and  minor  prose.  ,      ,  . 

grab '  variety,  we  may  study,  with 
out  distraction,  the  qualities  of  that  part  of  Poe's 
writings  in  prose  which  will  survive  the  passage  of 
years. 

Some  of  those  qualities  are  concisely  made 
apparent  by  the  rather  obvious  and  natural  com- 
FoeandHaw-  Prison  between  Hawthorne  and 
Poe,  who  wrote  at  the  same  great 
formative  period  in  American  literature.  Both 
were  original  and  characteristic  forces,  and  their 
peculiar  fields  in  fiction  were  occasionally  contig 
uous.  Hawthorne's  method  was  deliberate  and 
regular;  Poe's,  though  deliberate  at  last,  was 
sometimes  directed  by  a  peculiar  choice.  Haw 
thorne's  humor  was  more  gentle  and  constant ; 
Poe's  more  extravagant  and  artificial.  Both  were  \ 
realists  in  touch  and  idealists  in  thought,  but/ 
Hawthorne's  realism  cared  little  for  the  mysteries 
of  the  detective,  for  cryptograms  or  purloined 
letters,  or  for  semi-scientific  dreams.  Haw 
thorne's  strongest  stories  were  calm  but  mighty 
allegories  of  soul-triumph  or  spiritual  suicide,  of  ' 


122  American  Literature. 

development  or  destruction.  Poe's,  with  the 
exception  of  those  portraying  the  eternal  vitality 
of  the  life-principle,  were  chiefly  of  supernatural 
weirdness  and  horror,  or  of  unearthly  beauty. 
The  pellucid  literary  style  of  Hawthorne  con 
stantly  surpassed  that  of  Poe,  save  in  some  climax 
of  sombre  or  romantic  description  or  delineation. 
Hawthorne  was  an  observer  and  recorder  of  the 
broadest  range,  possessed  of  imaginative  genius, 
spiritual  insight,  and  a  sure  artistic  hand ;  his 
creations  affect  us  as  those  of  a  serene  master  in 
the  world  of  life  and  thought.  Poe  was  a  magi 
cian  who,  by  the  utmost  effort  of  a  powerful  will, 
brought  before  us,  in  shadow  and  in  sunlight, 
wonderful  beings  that  were  almost  beyond  his 
control : 

"  Black  spirits  and  white, 
Blue  spirits  and  gray." 

Relatively,  therefore,  the  power  and  range  of 
these  stories  are  manifestly  inferior  to  those 
exhibited  in  the  works  of  Hawthorne.  Abso 
lutely,  however,  they  stand  individually  forth, 
without  conspicuous  challenge  in  contemporary 
literature.  Hawthorne  and  Poe  were  in  no  sense 
rivals,  nor  did  either  regard  the  other  as  a  rival, 
or  even  a  fellow-worker  in  the  same  field.  Poe's 
vacillating  review  of  Hawthorne  does  not  disprove 
this  statement.  Indeed,  they  are  so  far  apart  that 
Coleridge  himself  seems  to  stand  between  them, 
with  something  of  Hawthorne's  humanitarianism 
on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  something  of 


Edgar  Allan  Poe.  123 

Poe's  supernaturalism  and  fondness  for  the  mar 
vellous.  Few  authors  gain  or  lose  less,  in  com 
parison  with  others,  than  these  two  peculiar 
Americans,  each  of  whom  knew  his  powers  and 
used  them  well. 

It  has  been  averred  that  Poe  had  but  "a 
mechanical  ideal,  that  disabled  him  from  doing 
any  very  noble  work  of  his  own."  His  Was  Poe  me_ 
work  was  evidently  not  noble  in  vital  chanicai? 
ethical  purpose;  but  at  its  best  it  was  excellent 
in  its  adequately  artistic  presentation  of  an  orig 
inal  and  legitimate  conception.  This  excellence 
hardly  permits  one  to  declare,  with  Tennyson, 
that  Poe  was  "the  greatest  American  genius/' 
the  literary  glory  of  America;  but  it  well  war 
rants  the  critic  in  assigning  him  a  place  among 
the  world's  artists  or  makers.  The  French  say 
ing,  "nothing  succeeds  like  success,"  is  already 
sufficiently  applicable  to  the  poems  and  tales 
of  this  favorite  of  the  French  literary  public. 
Neither  his  thoughts  nor  his  creations  were  of 
the  deepest  or  highest  type ;  but  his  feignings  • 
were  those  of  definite  genius  and  not  of  mere 
mechanical  cleverness,  of  which  the  reading  world 
soon  tires. 

Poe's  chief  stories  are  "tales  of  the  grotesque^ 
and  arabesque."  Their  hold  upon  plain  human 
life — such  as  that  portrayed  in  the  Could  Poe  create 
novels  of  George  Eliot— is  neither  characters? 
strong  nor  constant.  Even  in  the  detective  rid 
dles  of  "  The  Mystery  of  Marie  Roget,"  we  do 
not  feel  the  power  of  a  writer  whose  chief  aim  was 


124  American  Literature. 

to  delineate  actual  character.  Poe  created  few 
men  and  women  whose  personality  stands  clearly 
forth  in  the  reader's  mind.  No  Don  Quixote, 
Gil  Bias,  Robinson  Crusoe,  Colonel  Newcome, 
Sam  Weller,  Adam  Bede,  Phcebe  Pyncheon, 
Natty  Bumppo,  was  added  by  him  to  the  "  dic 
tionaries  of  noted  names  of  fiction."  With  all  his 
realism  and  reasoning  power,  he  was  no  master 
in  the  art  of  characterization.  Humanity  is  that 
which  shapes  and  warms  a  hero  or  heroine  in  fic 
tion  ;  and  humanity  was  the  quality  which  Poe 
most  conspicuously  lacked.  The  lack  was  so 
complete  that  its  absence  hardly  troubles  us. 
Poe's  bloodlessness  is  the  true  cause  of  the  failure 
of  the  most  of  his  ''tales  of  humor,"  which  are  thin 
and  artificial.  The  world  of  Le  Sage  and  Gold 
smith  was  for  him  a  terra  incognita.  But  his  non- 
humanity,  his  failure  in  creation  of  characters  of 
flesh  and  blood,  enabled  him  to  succeed  in  his  own 
field.  Destitute  of  sympathy,  his  analyses  were 
intellectual  and  not  spiritual.  Unworldly  and 
unheavenly,  he  was  empowered  by  his  very  nature 
to  introduce  us  to  the  spaceless  and  timeless 
regions  of  merely  mental  enchantment  and  horror. 
Unemotional,  he  was  unfettered  by  the  bonds  of 
earth,  but  in  tombland  and  ghostland  he  was  a 
master.  He  was  wise  enough  to  endeavor  to  con 
nect  his  work  with  some  thought  or  experience  of 
man,  but  of  such  connection  he  made  a  mere 
starting-point.  So  long  as  a  thought  or  feeling 
was  true  or  sufficiently  obvious,  he  cared  not  how 
vague  or  unusual  it  might  be.  In  the  elaboration 


Edgar  Allan  Poe.  125 

of  his  ideas  he  willingly  and  often  left  the  realm  - 
of  the  real,  but  he  never  dropped  the  central 
thread.  This  union  of  directness  and  mystery  is 
doubtless  the  chief  cause  of  his  literary  success. 
The  directness  is  of  the  world  of  matter,  and  the 
mystery  is  of  the  world  of  spirit  ;  this  man  so 
combined  explicit  reason  with  shadowy  imagina 
tion  that  he  seemed  to  enlarge  the  borders  of  his 
readers'  universe. 

Poe's  characters  and  plots  are  spectacular  and 
occasionally  impressive,  but  they  do  not  illuminate 
Poe's  mind  an<^  instruct.  The  instability  and  insin- 
and  heart.  cerity  which  made  the  man  Poe  so  often 
and  so  weakly  fall,  were  closely  connected  with 
his  lack  of  human  heart  and  sympathy.  "  The 
mind  and  the  heart,"  says  Longfellow  in  "  Hype 
rion,"  "  are  closely  linked  together,  and  the  errors 
of  genius  bear  with  them  their  own  chastisement, 
even  upon  earth."  Poe's  mind  was  large,  in  a— 
way,  but  his  heart  was  small ;  hence  his  personal 
career  verged  dangerously  near  the  course  of 
Ethan  Brand.  There  is  not  much  heart  in  his 
tales ;  their  light,  whether  whitely  clear  or  lurid, 
lacks  warmth  ;  their  characters  and  doings,  not 
withstanding  constant  intellectual  guidance,  are 
too  often,  therefore,  thin,  pale,  and  limited.  Poe, 
in  his  excursions  through  hell,  purgatory,  and  par 
adise,  wanders  far  from  Dante's  path.  Rossetti 
put  a  flesh-and-blood  woman  into  paradise  ;  Poe 
peopled  earth  itself  with  phantoms  and  abstrac 
tions.  In  his  stories,  as  in  his  poems,  we  cannot 
fail  to  note  some  influence  of  the  personality  of 


126  American  Literature. 

the  writer.  They  are  free  from  his  positive  sins, 
but  they  are  strongly  marked  by  his  negative 
signs.  On  the  side  of  the  human  soul  not  less 
than  the  human  mind  we  are  forced  to  perceive 
that  Poe's  field  was  limited  and  his  success  narrow. 
A  Raphael  could  paint  the  heavenly  in  the 
human;  Poe  never  learned  the  secret.  He  gave 
l  us  high  art  and  pure  spirit ;  but  could  not  give  us 
high  art  and  all-embracing  soul. 

The  sensational  and  merely  artificial  qualities 
which  disfigure  some  of  Poe's  poems — including 
"The  Raven  "•  —  are  in  one  sense  less  annoying  in 
his  prose.  The  stories  which  he  wrote  merely 
for  effect  may  be  divided  into  two  classes :  those 
of  strained  humor  and  mechanical  gayety,  which 
have  dropped  out  of  sight  for  lack  of  inherent 
merit ;  and  those  in  which  the  clever  ratiocination 
won  a  permanent  success  by  sheer  force  of  intel- 
Anaiytic  lectual  strength.  His  unending  self-con- 
power,  sciousness,  in  the  latter  case,  actually  be 
came  a  merit.  Conscience  was  not  needed,  nor 
deep  spiritual  sympathy ;  analytic  reason  was 
demanded,  and  in  this  no  American  author  was 
ever  stronger  than  Poe.  He  often  wrote  of 
strength  of  will,  but  his  own  was  very  weak ;  and 
most  of  his  literary  limitations  may  be  connected 
with  this  lack  of  a  strong,  dominating  individu 
ality.  But  in  the  matter  of  thought  and  its  logi 
cal  processes  he  needs  no  apology  or  defence, 
personal  or  literary.  His  mental  integrity — if  I 
may  coin  a  phrase — was  high.  All  charges  of  lit 
erary  dishonesty  may  be  dismissed  from  his  case. 


Edgar  Allan  Poe.  127 

He  wrote  hack  work,  at  times  valueless ;  but  its 
worthlessness  was  not  due  to  lack  of  expenditure 
of  such  intellectual  resources  as  were  at  hand. 
He  who  wasted  weeks  in  deciphering  newspaper 
correspondents'  cryptograms,  when  time  was 
money,  was  a  conscientious  workman  in  that  part 
of  his  mind  which  was  uninvaded  by  his  folly  or 
weakness. 

Conciseness  and  neatness  of  literary  workman-  I 
ship,  from  method  down  to  word,  were  to  be  ex 
pected  from  a  mind  constituted  as  was  his.  He 
is  always  verbally  intelligible,  however  remote  or 
unfamiliar  his  theme.  Clearness  in  clearness  of 
rhetoric  is  a  first  pre-requisite  of  force,  speech, 
and  by  its  almost  invariable  use  Poe  secured 
its  natural  result.  "The  Purloined  Letter,"  or 
"The  Gold  Bug,"  is  as  straightforward  as  Web 
ster's  description  of  the  White  murder  at  Salem. 
They  represent  a  class  of  stories  in  which  a  whole 
school  of  lesser  novelists  has  imitated  Poe,  but 
has  for  the  most  part  failed,  through  the  careless 
ness  which  is  born  of  over-sympathy.  Poe 
"hitched  his  wagon  to  a  star" — the  Black  Maria 
of  the  detective  story  to  the  cold  star  of  in 
tellectual  insight.  Strange  to  say,  he  was  en 
abled  to  carry  this  clearness  of  exposition  all  the 
way  from  such  obvious  stories  as  "The  Oblong 
Box,"  or  "  The  Premature  Burial,"  which  any 
magazinist  could  have  written,  up  to  "Ligeia" 
and  "The  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher."  It 
failed  him  only  when  he  undertook  to  portray  the 
great  mysteries  of  the  spiritual  universe,  for  the 


128  American  Literatiire. 

reason  that  mere  intellectual  insight  is  insufficient 
for  the  reading  of  the  riddle.  Poe  was  right 
when  he  announced  that  deduction,  or  poetic 
thought,  was  the  proper  starting  point  in  many 
great  movements  ;  but  his  failure — as  in  "  Eu 
reka"-— was  in  the  quality  of  the  thought  re 
quired.  He  could  not  use  a  key  which  he  did  not 
possess. 

There  is  a  numerous  class  of  readers  delighting 
in  speculations  concerning  the  unfulfilled  possibili 
ties  of  literature.     What  if  Keats  had  lived  ?  what 
if  Byron   and   Burns  had  been  temper- 

Poe  s  product  * 

the  best  he       ate     in    life-habits  ?    what    if    Poe    had 

could  offer.  .  . 

not  given  way  to  temptations  which 
formerly  limited  the  earthly  career  of  genius  to  a 
period  far  shorter  than  that  of  the  Tennysons 
and  Longfellows  of  to-day?  The  might-have- 
been  is  a  subject  for  guess-work  more  entertain 
ing  than  valuable.  In  Poe's  case  its  value  is  re 
duced  to  its  lowest  terms.  His  clearness,  direct 
ness,  and  force  in  literature,  as  I  said  at  the  start, 
apparently  suffered  little  from  his  personal  irregu 
larities,  and  even  from  the  hack-work  necessities 
of  his  life.  Poe,  though  he  earned  his  living  by 
his  pen  at  a  time  when  sentimentalism  was  better 
paid  than  genius,  refused  to  stoop  below,  nor 
could  he  rise  above,  the  plane  he  had  chosen, 
wisely  or  unwisely.  Seldom,  in  the  history  of 
literature,  can  we  say  so  confidently  that  the  work 
adequately  represents  the  man.  Poe  needs  no 
apologies  or  extenuations,  which  his  proud  nature 


Edgar  Allan  Poe.  129 

would  have  been  the  first  to  scorn.  His  field  was 
his  own ;  his  triumphs  were  those  won  by  his 
genius,  and  his  failures  were  natural  and  deliber 
ate,  not  the  result  of  intemperance,  accident,  or 
fate.  Many  of  his  poems  were  revised  again  and 
again,  and  the  revision  always  moved  toward  the 
style  which  is  most  characteristic  of  the  author. 

The  obedience  with  which  Poe's  pen  obeyed  his 
mind  is  well  displayed  in  "  William  Wilson,"  a 
story,  which,  though  comparatively  neg-  «wmiam 
lected  by  his  readers,  possesses  a  signifi-  Wllson-" 
cance  peculiar  to  itself.  It  is  partly  autobio 
graphical  ;  it  vividly  describes  the  buildings  and 
environment  of  the  school  at  Stoke  Newington, 
England,  in  which  some  of  Poe's  boyhood  days 
were  spent ;  and,  in  later  pages,  it  unquestionably 
contains  a  personal  element.  Its  theme  is  peren 
nial  :  the  struggle  between  good  and  bad  in  one 
man  ;  between  conscience  and  the  self-destroying 
principle  of  sin.  Neither  of  the  two  William  Wil 
sons — he  of  the  echoing  whisper,  the  haunting 
presence  in  sin  or  danger,  and  the  solemn  moni 
tions  ;  and  he  of  the  heedless  and  selfish  down 
ward  way — is  lightly  to  be  declared  the  real  Poe, 
for  the  tale  is,  of  course,  dramatic.  But  it  is  im 
possible  not  to  read  this  deeply  religious  allegory 
without  feeling  that  nowhere  else  do  we  come  so 
near  the  real  man.  The  author  of  "  William  Wil 
son  "  must  have  seen  at  times  the  Dantean  and 
Miltonic  vision  of  mighty  right  and  hideous 
wrong,  and  must  have  possessed  in  his  own  soul 

9 


130  American  Literature. 

the  power  of  that  ultimate  rectification  which 
heeds  the  voice  from  the  Paradiso  and  not  the 
Inferno. 

A  few  of  Poe's  productions  in  prose  were  writ 
ten  with  an  idea  of  the  prose-poem  in  the  author's 
Prose-  rnind.  Not  content  with  the  music  of  verse 
poems.  Qr  with  occasional  careful  presentations  of 
euphonic  phrases  in  his  better  stories,  he  essayed 
occasionally  the  art  of  deliberately  melodious 
utterance  in  prose.  By  the  choice  of  a  single  iso 
lated  thought  or  a  significantly  romantic  theme, 
and  by  the  use  of  that  archaic  English  which  is 
instinctively  connected  with  the  attempt  of  prose 
to  express  the  ideal,  he  sought  to  secure  results 
which  would  have  attracted  more  notice  had  they 
been  more  numerous  or  sustained.  As  it  is,  they 
occasionally  produce  effects  not  essentially  differ 
ent  from  those  which  follow  the  reading  of  parts 
of  the  best  of  the  poems  and  stories ;  but  since 
their  central  ideas  are  less  potent  in  their  grasp 
upon  the  reader's  mind,  they  are  little  heeded  by 
the  majority  of  Poe's  public.  Weird  music,  inter 
preting  thoughts  of  the  ethereal  or  the  horrible, 
is  so  frequently  heard  from  Poe's  hand  that  it 
ceases  to  be  novel  in  pieces  which  would  arouse 
interest  if  more  exceptional  in  tone.  They  are 
similar  to  the  author's  other  work,  and  not  strong 
enough  to  command  a  place  for  themselves.  The 
"Silence;  brief  study  entitled  "  Silence,  a  Fable,"  how- 
a  Fable."  ever,  is  at  least  worth  a  deliberate  reading  : 

" '  Listen  to  me?  said  the  Demon,  as  he  placed  his  hand  upon 
my  head.  *  The  region  of  which  I  speak  is  a  dreary  region  in 
Libya,  by  the  borders  of  the  river  Zaire,  and  there  is  no  quiet 
there,  nor  silence. 


Edgar  Allan  Poe.  131 

" '  The  waters  of  the  river  have  a  saffron  and  sickly  hue ;  and 
they,  flow  not  onward  to  the  sea,  but  palpitate  forever  and  for 
ever  beneath  the  red  eye  of  the  sun  with  a  tumultuous  and  con 
vulsive  motion.  For  many  miles  on  either  side  of  the  river's 
oozy  bed  is  a  pale  desert  of  gigantic  water-lilies.  They  sigh 
one  unto  the  other,  in  that  solitude,  and  stretch  toward  the 
heavens  their  long  and  ghastly  necks,  and  nod  to  and  fro  their 
everlasting  heads.  And  there  is  an  indistinct  murmur  whic 
cometh  out  from  among  them  like  the  rushing  of  subterren 
water.  And  they  sigh  one  unto  the  other. 

"  '  But  there  is  a  boundary  to  their  realm — the  boundary  of 
the  dark,  horrible,  lofty  forest.  There,  like  the  waves  about  the 
Hebrides,  the  low  underwood  is  agitated  continually.  But 
there  is  no  wind  throughout  the  heaven.  And  the  tall,  primeval 
trees  rock  eternally  hither  and  thither  with  a  crashing  and 
mighty  sound.  And  from  their  high  summits,  one  by  one,  drop 
everlasting  dews.  And  at  the  roots  strange  poisonous  flowers 
lie  writhing  in  perturbed  slumber.  And  overhead,  with  a  rus 
tling  and  loud  noise,  the  gray  clouds  rush  westwardly  forever, 
until  they  roll,  a  cataract,  over  the  fiery  wall  of  the  horizon. 
But  there  is  no  wind  throughout  the  heaven.  And  by  the 
shores  of  the  river  Zaire  there  is  neither  quiet  nor  silence. 

"'It  was  night,  and  the  rain  fell;  and,  falling,  it  was  rain, 
but,  having  fallen,  it  was  blood.  And  I  stood  in  the  morass 
among  the  tall  lilies,  and  the  rain  fell  upon  my  head — and  the 
lilies  sighed  one  unto  the  other  in  the  solemnity  of  their  desola 
tion. 

"  *  And,  all  at  once,  the  moon  arose  through  the  thin  ghastly 
mist,  and  was  crimson  in  color.  And  mine  eyes  fell  upon  a 
huge  gray  rock  which  stood  by  the  shore  of  the  river,  and  was 
lighted  by  the  light  of  the  moon.  And  the  rock  was  gray,  and 
ghastly,  and  tall, — and  the  rock  was  gray.  Upon  its  front  were 
characters  engraven  in  the  stone ;  and  I  walked  through  the 
morass  of  water-lilies,  until  I  came  close  unto  the  shore,  that  I 
might  read  the  characters  upon  the  stone.  But  I  could  not 
decipher  them.  And  I  was  going  back  into  the  morass,  when 
the  moon  shone  with  a  fuller  red,  and  I  turned  and  looked 
again  upon  the  rock,  and  upon  the  characters ;  and  the  char 
acters  were  DESOLATION. 


132  American  Literature. 

" '  And  I  looked  upward,  and  there  stood  a  man  upon  the 
summit  of  the  rock;  and  I  hid  myself  among  the  water-lilies 
that  I  might  discover  the  actions  of  the  man.  And  the  man 
was  tall  and  stately  in  form,  and  was  wrapped  up  from  his 
shoulders  to  his  feet  in  the  toga  of  old  Rome.  And  the  out 
lines  of  his  figure  were  indistinct — but  his  features  were  the 
features  of  a  deity ;  for  the  mantle  of  the  night,  and  of  the  mist, 
and  of  the  moon,  and  of  the  dew,  had  left  uncovered  the  feat 
ures  of  his  face.  And  his  brow  was  lofty  with  thought,  and 
his  eye  wild  with  care  ;  and  in  the  few  furrows  upon  his  cheek 
I  read  the  fables  of  sorrow,  and  weariness,  and  disgust  with 
mankind,  and  a  longing  after  solitude. 

"  *  And  the  man  sat  upon  a  rock,  and  leaned  his  head  upon 
his  hand,  and  looked  out  upon  the  desolation.  He  looked 
down  into  the  low  unquiet  shrubbery,  and  up  into  the  tall  pri 
meval  trees,  and  up  higher  at  the  rustling  heaven,  and  into  the 
crimson  moon.  And  I  lay  close  within  shelter  of  the  lilies,  and 
observed  the  actions  of  the  man.  And  the  man  trembled  in 
the  solitude  ; — but  the  night  waned,  and  he  sat  upon  the  rock. 

"  '  And  the  man  turned  his  attention  from  the  heaven,  and 
looked  out  upon  the  dreary  river  Zaire,  and  upon  the  yellow 
ghastly  waters,  and  upon  the  pale  legions  of  the  water-lilies. 
And  the  man  listened  to  the  sighs  of  the  water-lilies,  and  to  the 
murmur  that  came  up  from  among  them.  And  I  lay  close 
within  my  covert  and  observed  the  actions  of  the  man.  And 
the  man  trembled  in  the  solitude  ; — but  the  night  waned,  and  he 
sat  upon  the  rock. 

"  '  Then  I  went  down  into  the  recesses  of  the  morass  and 
waded  afar  in  among  the  wilderness  of  lilies,  and  called  upon 
the  hippopotami  which  dwelt  among  the  fens  in  the  recesses  of 
the  morass.  And  the  hippopotami  heard  my  call,  and  came, 
with  the  behemoth,  unto  the  foot  of  the  rock,  and  roared  loudly 
and  fearfully  beneath  the  moon.  And  I  lay  close  within  my 
covert  and  observed  the  actions  of  the  man.  And  the  man 
trembled  in  the  solitude  ; — but  the  night  waned,  and  he  sat 
upon  the  rock. 

" '  Then  I  cursed  the  elements  with  the  curse  of  tumult ;  and 
a  frightful  tempest  gathered  in  the  heaven,  where  before  there 
had  been  no  wind.  And  the  heaven  became  livid  with  the  vio- 


Edgar  Allan  Poe.  133 

lence  of  the  tempest — and  the  rain  beat  upon  the  head  of  the 
man — and  the  flood  of  the  river  came  clown — and  the  river  was 
tormented  into  foam — and  the  water-lilies  shrieked  within  their 
beds — and  the  forest  crumbled  before  the  wind — and  the 
thunder  rolled — and  the  lightning  fell — and  the  rock  rocked  to 
its  foundation.  And  I  lay  close  within  my  covert  and  observed 
the  actions  of  the  man.  And  the  man  trembled  in  the  solitude ; 
— but  the  night  waned,  and  he  sat  upon  the  rock. 

"  Then  I  grew  angry,  and  cursed  with  the  curse  of  silence, 
the  river,  and  the  lilies,  and  the  wind,  and  the  forest,  and  the 
heavens,  and  the  thunder,  and  the  sighs  of  the  water-lilies, 
And  they  became  accursed  and  were  still.  And  the  moon 
ceased  to  totter  up  its  pathway  to  heaven — and  the  thunder 
died  away — and  the  lightning  did  not  flash — and  the  clouds 
hung  motionless — and  the  waters  sunk  to  their  level  and 
remained — and  the  trees  ceased  to  rock — and  the  water-lilies 
sighed  no  more — and  the  murmur  was  heard  no  longer  among 
them,  nor  any  shadow  of  sound  throughout  the  vast  illimitable 
desert.  And  I  looked  upon  the  characters  of  the  rock,  and 
they  were  changed,  and  the  characters  were  SILENCE. 

"  'And  mine  eyes  fell  upon  the  countenance  of  the  man,  and 
his  countenance  was  wan  with  terror.  And  hurriedly,  he  raised 
his  head  from  his  hand,  and  stood  forth  upon  the  rock  and 
listened.  But  there  was  no  voice  throughout  the  vast  illimit 
able  desert,  and  the  characters  upon  the  rocks  were  SILENCE. 
And  the  man  shuddered,  and  turned  his  face  away,  and  fled 
afar  off,  in  haste,  so  that  I  beheld  him  no  more." 

******  =& 

"  Now  there  are  fine  tales  in  the  volumes  of  the  Magi — in 
the  iron-bound,  melancholy  volumes  of  the  Magi.  Therein,  I 
say,  are  glorious  histories  of  the  Heaven,  and  of  the  Earth,  and 
of  the  mighty  sea — and  of  the  genii  that  overruled  the  sea,  and 
the  Earth,  and  the  lofty  Heaven.  There  was  much  lore  too  in 
the  sayings  which  were  said  by  the  sibyls ;  and  holy,  holy 
things  were  heard  of  old  by  the  dim  leaves  that  trembled  round 
Dodona — but,  as  Allah  liveth,  that  fable  which  the  Demon  told 
me  as  he  sat  by  my  side  in  the  shadow  of  the  tomb,  I  hold  to 
be  the  most  wonderful  of  all !  And  as  the  Demon  made  an 


134  American  Literature. 

end  of  his  story,  he  fell  back  within  the  cavity  of  the  tomb  and 
laughed.  And  I  could  not  laugh  with  the  Demon,  and  he 
cursed  me  because  I  could  not  laugh.  And  the  lynx  which 
dwelleth  forever  in  the  tomb,  came  out  therefrom,  and  lay  down 
at  the  feet  of  the  Demon,  and  looked  at  him  steadily  in  the 
face." 

This  ambitious  sketch  is  the  best  example  of 
Poe's  deliberate  picture-writing,  and  on  the  whole 
it  must  be  called  thin  and  artificial.  The  quality 
of  artificiality  is  the  bane  that  poisons  much  of  his 
work.  Where  his  conceptions  were  at  once 
original  and  within  the  scope  of  his  mental 
powers,  they  were  presented  with  an  art  that  will 
live ;  where  he  sought  to  startle  or  impress  by 
useless  incantations  he  very  naturally  and  speedily 
failed.  It  is  easy  to  imagine  how  De  Quincey  or 
Hawthorne  would  have  written  "  Silence,"  and  it 
would  not  have  been  in  this  thin  and  impover 
ished  style,  with  its  multiplicity  of  "  ands  "  and  its 
downright  carelessness  where  art  should  have 
been  flawless.  "  And  the  hippopotami  heard  my 
call,  and  came,  with  the  behemoth,  unto  the  foot 
of  the  rock,  and  roared  loudly  and  fearfully 
beneath  the  moon."  That  is,  the  hippopotami 
came  with  the  hippopotamus  and  so  managed 
their  snorting  and  blowing  as  to  produce  a  loud 
and  fearful  roar.  This  is  not  the  only  production 
of  Poe  in  which  he  seems  like  a  sublimated  soph 
omore. 

Time  has  done  much,  within  the  space  of  the 
forty  years  that  have  elapsed  since  the  poet's 
death,  to  correct  misjudgments  concerning  Poe's 


Edgar  Allan  Poe.  135 

life  and  work.     The  mass  of  writing  concerning 
him — critical,   laudatory,    or   denuncia- 

J  .     ,     .  Time  and  Poe. 

tory — has  not  been  exceeded  in  the 
case  of  any  other  American  writer.  At  the  one 
extreme  of  opinion  is  the  curt  and  contempt 
uous  statement  that  his  writings,  if  now  freshly 
offered  to  the  public  of  readers,  would  not  attract 
serious  attention.  At  the  other  are  such  words  as 
M.  Jules  Lemaitre  (in  his  "  Dialogue  des  Morts, 
a  propos  de  la  preface  du  '  Pretre  de  Nemi '  "  *) 
puts  into  the  poet's  mouth  : 

"  Edgard  Poe. — Vous  dites  bien.  J'ai  vecu  vingt-trois 
siecles  apres  Platon  et  trois  cents  ans  apres  Shakespeare,  k 
quelqne  douze  cents  lieues  de  Londres  et  a  quelque  deux  milles 
lieues  d'Athenes,  dans  un  continent  que  nul  ne  connaissait  au 
temps  de  Platon.  J'ai  etc  un  malade  et  un  f ou ;  j'ai  eprouve 
plus  que  personne  avant  moi  la  terreur  de  1'inconnu,  du  noir, 
du  mysterieux,  de  1'inexplique.  J'ai  ete  le  poete  des  halluci 
nations  et  des  vertigues ;  j'ai  ete  le  poete  de  la  Peur.  J'ai 
deVeloppe  dans  un  style  precis  et  froid  la  logique  secrete  des 
folies,  et  j'ai  exprime  des  etats  de  conscience  que  1'auteur  d' 
Hamlet  lui-meme  n'a  pressenti  que  deux  ou  trois  fois.  Peut- 
etre  aurait-on  raison  de  dire  que  je  differe  moiris  de  Shakes 
peare  que  de  Platon  :  mais  il  reste  vrai  que  nous  presentons 
trois  exemplaires  de  1'espece  humaine  aussi  dissemblables  que 
possible." 

Plato,  Shakespeare  and  Poe ! — is  our  bard,  luck 
less  in  life,  to  go  down  the  ages  in  such  company 
as  this,  gravely  weighed  and  compared  with  the 
very  masters  of  the  human  mind?  Is  he  abso 
lutely  matchless  in  his  delineations  of  the  terror 
that  lurks  in  the  shade  of  the  soul's  mysterious 

*  Les  Lettres  et  l&s  Arts,  Janvier,  1886. 


136  American  L^terat^ire. 

night-time  ?  Not  so ,  the  French  admirers  of  his 
genius,  misled  by  the  intensity  of  a  taste  national 
rather  than  catholic,  would  give  to  the  clever 
magician  honors  belonging  to  the  profound  phi 
losopher.  Poe  is  absolute  master  only  of  the 
young  or  the  superficially  impressionable.  He 
cannot  affect  our  whole  lives  as  does  a  Hawthorne 
in  prose,  nor  can  his  eye  sweep  from  zenith  to 
nadir  in  the  poetic  vision  of  Emerson.  His  realm 
of  heaven-lit  night  is  narrow,  and  his  rule  is  that 
of  a  noble  and  not  of  a  king;  but  realm  and  rule 
will  endure. 


CHAPTER  V. 

EMERSON    AS    POET. 

THE  literary  history  of  past  centuries,  in  many 
ands,  shows  to  us  numerous  prose-writers  who 
lave  written  verse,  and  not  a  few  poets  whose 
>rose  letters,  journals,  or  weightier  works  have 
>een  treasured  up.  Prose  is  the  natural  utterance 
>f  the  mind ;  therefore  it  falls  from  poets'  poetry 
ips  or  pens  ;  poetry  is  the  highest  form  of  and  Prose' 
iterature,  therefore  it  is  essayed  by  those  who 
vrite  chiefly  in  prose.  But  not  until  the  nine- 
eenth  century  have  authors  of  eminence  written 
n  prose  and  in  verse  almost  indifferently,  and 
vith  nicely  balanced  success.  The  greater  poets 
>f  contemporary  England,  indeed,  still  write  verse 
done.  The  tendency  of  the  time,  however,  is  to 
nake  the  man  of  letters  seek  many  modes  of  ex- 
cession,  and  try  varied  forms  of  work.  In  Amer- 
ca,  with  much  to  say  and  to  do,  with  the  pressure 
)f  newness  ever  making  itself  felt  -upon  the  mind, 
nost  poets  write  prose  at  wish  or  at  need,  and 
eminent  prose-writers  are  not  guiltless  of  "  iambs 
ind  pentameters."  Longfellow  gave  us  a  senti- 
nental  romance,  an  idyllic  novelette,  and  some 
rood  criticisms ;  the  young  Whittier  was  biogra 
pher,  essayist,  or  historical  novelist ;  Bryant  was 
:raveller  and  commemorative  orator,  and  in  his 

137 


138  American  Literature. 

youth  could  spin  a  fair  tale  in  prose  ;  Poe's  high 
continental  renown  is  based  upon  his  tales  as  truly 
as  upon  his  poems  ;  Holmes  the  Autocrat,  and  Pro 
fessor,  and  novelist,  shares  honor  with  Holmes 
the  poet  of  "  The  Last  Leaf"  and  -The  Deacon's 
Masterpiece";  and  Lowell,  in  the  time  devoted  to 
criticism  of  others,  has  stolen  that  which  would 
have  enhanced  his  standing  in  the  muses'  court. 

The  prose  of  Longfellow,  Whittier,  and  Bryant 

will  pass  out  of  sight ;  and  prose  or  verse  rather 

than  prose  and  verse,  will  finally  be  preferred   by 

the  test  of  time  in  other  cases.     In  the  writings  of 

Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  however,  they 

Ealph  Waldo  ,  ,  .    / 

Emerson,  need  not  be  and  cannot  be  separated  m 
final  verdict  or  present  estimate.  Em 
erson  was  a  seer  and  utterer ;  a  great  mind  look 
ing  out  upon  the  universe,  and  telling  the  world 
what  he  saw  and  thought.  His  words  were  spoken 
in  prose  or  poetry  as  seemed  to  him  fit ;  but  the 
purpose  and  the  general  plan  were  ever  the  same. 
There  is  no  intrinsic  reason  why  his  prose  and 
verse  should  be  considered  in  separate  chapters. 
Their  treatment  in  different  volumes  of  this  history 
forms,  I  believe,  the  only  notable  exception  to  the 
general  desirability  of  the  plan  of  the  work, 
whereby,  in  symmetrical  progress,  the  two  great 
divisions  of  non-imaginative  and  imaginative 
American  writings  are  viewed  without  vexatious 
interruption.  Even  in  Emerson's  case,  however, 
the  changed  point  of  view — as  in  looking  at  Can 
terbury  Cathedral — but  illustrates  the  variant 
unity  of  a  great  intellectual  product. 


Emerson  as  Poet.  139 

The  poetry  of  Emerson  occupies  a  peculiar 
position.  It  is  obedient,  as  a  rule,  to  the  canons 
of  poetic  art ;  much  of  it  is  highly  lyrical  and  of 
exquisite  finish  ;  but  on  the  whole  it  is  simply  to 
be  considered  as  a  medium  for  the  expression  of 
thought  which  could  not  so  concisely  be  uttered 
in  prose.  When  Emerson  wished  to  speak  with 
peculiar  terseness,  with  unusual  exaltation,  with 
special  depth  of  meaning,  with  the  utmost  in 
tensity  of  conviction,  he  spoke  in  poetic  form. 
He  who  misses  this  fact  cannot  rightly  interpret 
Emerson  the  poet. 

His  themes  are  of  the  highest  that  can  engage 
the  singer's  or  the  sayer's  attention.  The  col 
lected  body  of  his  verse,  in  the  final  edition,  is  but 
a  single  volume  of  moderate  size ;  but 

.  ,  .  i  1  111  Emerson's 

within  those  three  hundred  pages  how  Poetic 
much  is  packed !  Emerson  stands  on  our 
earth  in  the  middle  years  of  the  nineteenth  cent 
ury,  and  looks  about  him.  He  peers  into  the 
past  of  Greece  and  Rome,  of  Palestine  and  Egypt, 
and  of  remoter  India.  He  studies  minutely  the 
wroods,  and  waters,  and  birds,  and  beasts,  and  men 
and  women  of  his  town  and  neighborhood.  He 
gazes  upward  to  the  stars  of  heaven  and  down 
ward  to  the  central  fires.  He  stands  by  the  bed 
of  sickness  and  the  open  grave,  and  peers  beyond 
to  the  hereafter  of  the  soul.  In  all  he  is  the  opti 
mist  rather  than  the  pessimist,  the  philosopher, 
not  the  mere  bystander.  Idealism  appears  to  him 
a  thing  lovely  and  of  eternal  truth  ;  materialism 
hateful,  and  to  die  with  the  perishing  matter 


140  American  Literature. 

from  which  it  sprung-.  Above  and  in  all,  for  him, 
is  the  spiritual  meaning  and  mission  of  nature  to 
the  individual  soul.  For  that  soul  the  whole 
universe  is  the  ethical  teacher^ 

For  the  reasons  stated,  one  would  expect  to 
find  the  poetry  of  Emerson  irregular,  unconven- 
His  Method  and  tional,  at  times  careless.  Emerson 
Limitations.  was  too  mucn  an  artist  to  neglect  the 

artistic  element,  but  it  is  invariably  made  subor 
dinate.  Clear  expression  of  high  thought  is  his  *• 
perpetual  desire.  His  very  wish  to  be  terse  some 
times  makes  him  obscure,  and  oftener  causes  him 
to  seem  obscure.  In  this  respect,  as  in  some 
others,  there  is  a  parallel  between  Emerson  and 
Browning.  The  two  poets,  with  manifold  differ 
ences  of  mind  and  of  method^  are  at  one  in  their 
broad  view  of  life's  mysteries  and  duties,  and  of 
the  poet's  relation  to  God  and  to  man.  Both  are 
unpopular  among  the  multitude,  and  beloved  by 
the  few  to  whom  they  are  masters  and  benefac 
tors.  Emerson  could  not  be,  like  Browning  at 
times,  a  stirring  lyrical  poet  of  battle  and  of  the 
fire  of  life,  but  he  could  be  sweetly  melodious, 
charming  his  readers  and  hearers  by  the  form  and 
expression  of  his  song.  Not  a  constructive  dram 
atist,  Emerson  had  the  dramatic  instinct  in  so  far 
that  he  could  put  himself  in  the  stead  of  others, 
and  imagine  himself  in  a  "far  or  forgot"  place 
and  time.  As  a  poet,  he  sung  when  he  must  or 
would,  not  merely  when  he  should  or  could. 
Emerson,  in  his  last  years,  declared  that  Long 
fellow  wrote  too  much  ;  Longfellow  might  have 


Emerson  as  Poet.  141 

retorted  that  Emerson  wrote  too  little.  In  Long 
fellow,  true  poet  though  he  was,  art  sometimes 
usurped  the  place  of  genius  ;  in  Emerson,  genius 
too  often  refused  the  needed  aid  of  art.  Emerson 
could  write  a  poem  "round  and  perfect  as  a  star," 
or  set  ''jewels  five  words  long"  in  immortal  verse; 
but,  like  Wordsworth,  he  sometimes  strayed  into 
the  regions  of  the  ridiculous.  His  devotion  to 
poetic  art  increased  toward  the  close  of  his  life  ; 
his  later  poems  show  a  gain  in  form  and  finish, 
and  he  left  behind  him  unpublished  pieces  sur 
passing  not  a  few  of  those  printed  in  his  first 
book  of  verse.  On  the  whole,  however,  there  is 
a  certain  impression  left  upon  the  minds  of  the 
readers  of  Emerson's  verse  which,  for  lack  of  a 
better  expression,  may  be  described  by  the  word 
fragmentary.  It  should  by  no  means  be  implied 
that  his  poems  are  mere  broken  bits  of  genius,  or 
imperfect  indications  of  the  irregular  powers  of  an 
idle  or  self-destructive  mind.  The  mere  supposi 
tion  would  be  absurd.  An  English  critic  has  said 
of  Coleridge,  as  poet :  "  all  that  he  did  excel 
lently  might  be  bound  up  in  twenty  pages,  but  it 
should  be  bound  in  pure  gold."  The  poems  of 
Emerson  are  golden  leaves  which  do  not  need  to 
be  bound  separately  from  his  prose  essays,  of 
which  they  are  the  companion  and  interpreter. 
Whatever  fragmentary  character  they  may  have 
is  due  not  to  failure  or  incompleteness,  but  to  the 
fact  that  Emerson  was,  in  a  true  sense,  a  sort  of 
oracular  philosopher  and  prophet ;  and  philoso 
phers  and  prophets  do  not  feel  bound  to  produce 


142  American  Literature. 

epics  in  twelve  books,  or  dramas  in  five  acts,  or 
even  blank  verse  poems,  fifty  pages  long.  When 
Emerson  had  said  his  say  in  verse,  he  stopped. 
His  poems  are  more  artistic,  of  course,  than  his 
essays ;  more  than  the  essays,  they  have  their 
fixed  beginnings,  progress  and  end ;  verse,  in 
Emerson's  mind,  was  the  finest  condensation  of 
thought  and  utterance.  That  rigid  and  austere 
governance  of  English  verse  which  Gray  got  from 
classic  study,  Emerson  derived,  when  he  wished, 
from  the  nature  of  his  own  mind.  Even  in  his 
poems  that  apparently  run  rapidly  on,  each  line  is 
packed  with  thought — packed  so  closely,  some 
times,  that  the  wise  reader  cannot  discover  what 
the  poet  meant  to  say. 

The  poetry  of  Emerson  is  by  no  means  that  of 
a  mere  preacher.  In  a  previous  criticism  I  once 
said  of  him :  "  Both  in  poetry  and  in  prose  his 
influence  is  as  spontaneous  as  that  of  nature  ;  he 
announces,  and  lets  others  plead."  I  may  be 
His  Sponta-  permitted  to  repeat  the  statement,  for 
neity.  convenience'  sake,  because  I  cannot  bet 

ter  claim  for  him  the  character  and  work  of  the 
true  poet.  Keats  himself,  in  his  world-famous 
line,  "  A  thing  of  beauty  is  a  joy  forever,"  did  not 
more  loyally  or  more  fitly  describe  nature's  and 
poetry's  self-existent  loveliness  than  did  Emerson 
"TheRho-  m  n^s  poem,  "The  Rhodora :  On  being 
dora-"  asked,  Whence  is  the  Flower?" 

In  May,  when  sea-winds  pierced  our  solitudes, 
I  found  the  fresh  Rhodora  in  the  woods, 
Spreading  its  leafless  bloom  in  a  damp  nook, 
To  please  the  desert  and  the  sluggish  brook. 


Emerson  as    Poet.  143 

The  purple  petals,  fallen  in  the  pool, 

Made  the  black  water  with  their  beauty  gay; 

Here  might  the  red  bird  come  his  plumes  to  cool, 

And  court  the  flower  that  cheapens  his  array. 

Rhodora !    if  the  sages  ask  thee  why 

This  charm  is  wasted  on  the  earth  and  sky, 

Tell  them,  dear,  that  if  eyes  were  made  for  seeing, 

Then  Beauty  is  its  own  excuse  for  being : 

Why  thou  wert  there,  O  rival  of  the  rose  ! 

I  never  thought  to  ask,  I  never  knew ; 

But  in  my  simple  ignorance,  suppose 

The  self-same  power  that  brought  me  there  brought  you. 

This  is  the  poet's  credo,  and  it  could  hardly  be 
better  stated.  It  is  not  heartless  "  art  for  art's 
sake,"  nor  does  it  try  to  make  poetry  "  turn  the 
crank  of  an  opinion-mill."  The  poet  sings  be 
cause  he  must,  for  very  joyance,  and  for  the  shar 
ing  of  nature's  beauty.  But  nature,  in  Emerson's 
verse,  is  something  more  than  mere  prettiness ;  it 
is  now  a  mirror  of  mind,  now  a  spiritual  parable, 
now  a  revelation  of  the  supernal  goodness  of  the 
All-maker.  Thus  viewed,  nature  becomes  an  in 
spiration  unknown  to  the  materialist,  on  the  one 
hand,  or  the  sour  moralizer  over  a  "  lost  world," 
on  the  other.  Emerson's  poetry  of  nature  has 
the  broadest  range,  from  noon-day  sky  to  swampy 
pool,  from  snow-capped  mountain  to  skipping 
squirrel  on  the  tree  : 

For  Nature  beats  in  perfect  tune, 
And  rounds  with  rhyme  her  every  rune, 
Whether  she  work  in  land  or  sea, 
Or  hide  underground  her  alchemy. 
Thou  canst  not  wave  thy  staff  in  air, 
Or  dip  thy  paddle  in  the  lake, 


144  American  Literature. 

But  it  carves  the  bow  of  beauty  there, 

Arid  the  ripples  in  rhymes  the  oar  forsake. 

The  wood  and  wave  each  other  know. 

Not  unrelated,  unaffied, 

But  to  each  thought  and  thing  allied, 

Is  perfect  Nature's  every  part, 

Rooted  in  the  mighty  Heart. 

Emerson's  general  reputation  as  a  writer  dates 
from  the  publication  of  his  essay  on  tl  Nature," 
which  slowly  worked  its  way  into  fame.  The  cir 
cumstance  was  no  accident,  for  the  material  world, 
as  the  background — or,  more  properly,  the  com 
panion  and  friend — of  the  intellectual  and  spirit 
ual,  is  never  long  lost  to  sight  in  the  prose  pages 
of  Emerson.  In  his  verse  it  is  equally  important; 
A  poet  it  would  be  as  just  to  call  Emerson  the 
of  nature.  pOet  Qf  nature  as  to  apply  the  familiar 

phrase  to  Bryant.  Nature-poetry  made  great 
progress  between  the  time  of  Thomson  and  that 
of  Shelley  and  Wordsworth.  It  would  be  idle 
and  valueless  to  institute  a  comparison  between 
poets  as  unlike  as  Wordsworth  and  Emerson ;  for 
the  originality  of  the  latter  is  unquestionable.  In 
external  form  Shelley's  "  Life  of  life,  thy  lips  en 
kindle  "  lyric  in  "  Prometheus  Unbound,"  which 
Mr.  Palgrave,  in  his  "  Golden  Treasury,"  entitles 
a  "  Hymn  to  the  Spirit  of  Nature,"  is  far  from 
the  Emersonian  type  ;  but  Shelley  and  Emerson 
were  not  dissimilar  in  their  rapt  devotion  to  the 
beauty  and  all-pervading  charm  of  the  external 
world.  Both  were  called  pantheists,  at  one  time 
or  another;  and  the  Englishman  and  the  Ameri- 


Emerson  as  Poet.  145 

can  reproduced,  in  various  forms,  certain  Greek 
conceptions  and  expressions.  The  old  truths, 
ancient  as  the  world  and  fresh  as  the  new  dawn, 
are  given  a  nineteenth-century  application  in 
many  of  Emerson's  lines ;  take,  for  instance,  a  few 
stanzas  from  "  The  World  Soul  "  : 

For  Destiny  never  swerves, 

Nor  yields  to  men  the  helm ; 
He  shoots  his  thought,  by  hidden  nerves, 

Throughout  the  solid  realm. 
The  patient  Daemon  sits, 

With  roses  and  a  shroud  ; 
He  has  his  way,  and  deals  his  gifts, — 

But  ours  is  not  allowed. 


When  the  old  world  is  sterile, 

And  the  ages  are  effete, 
He  will  from  wrecks  and  sediment 

The  fairer  world  complete. 
He  forbids  to  despair; 

His  cheeks  mantle  v/ith  mirth ; 
And  the  unimagined  good  of  men 

Is  yeaning  at  the  birth. 


Spring  still  makes  spring  in  the  mind 

When  sixty  years  are  told ; 
Love  wakes  anew  this  throbbing  heart, 

And  we  are  never  old. 
Over  the  winter  glaciers 

I  see  the  summer  glow, 
And  through  the  wild-piled  snowdrift 

The  warm  rosebuds  below. 

Parts  of  these  stanzas,  and  other  parts  of  the 
same  poem,  suggest  at  once  the  relations  between 


10 


146  American  Literature. 

Emerson  s  poetic  thought  and  poetic  expression. 


Thou  ht  latter>  we  sometimes  find  art,  some- 

and          times     artlessness,    sometimes     deliberate 

expression. 

crudity.  A  1  ennyson  or  a  Longfellow 
would  not  have  permitted  some  of  the  lines  just 
quoted  to  pass  without  artistic  revision.  Not 
even  Wordsworth  pressed  so  dangerously  near 
as  did  Emerson  at  times,  the  borderland  of  what 
is  bald,  or  juvenile,  or  apparently  silly.  The  third 
and  fourth  stanzas  of  Emerson's  poem  on 
"Tact"  (dropped  from  the  final  edition)  are  sorry 
doggerel  : 

The  maiden  in  danger 

Was  saved  by  the  swain  ; 
His  stout  arm  restored  her 

To  Broadway  again. 

The  maid  would  reward  him,  — 

Gay  company  come,  — 
They  laugh,  she  laughs  with  them; 

He  is  moonstruck  and  dumb. 

This    is    on  the  artistic    level  of   Wordsworth's 

"  Fretted  by  sallies  of  his  mother's  kisses," 
or  that  estimable  stanza  of  the  same  pious  poet  : 

"'And  now,  as  fitting  is  and  right, 
We  in  the  church  our  faith  will  plight, 

A  husband  and  a  wife  ;  ' 
Even  so  they  did  ;  and  I  may  say 
That  to  sweet  Ruth  that  happy  day 

Was  more  than  human  life." 

Wordsworth,  in   his   revolt  against   eighteenth 
century    academic    poetry,    went    far   toward   the 


Emerson  as  Poet.  147 

absurdity  of  over  simplicity ;  just  as  the  pre- 
Raphaelite  English  poets  and  painters,  half  a 
century  later,  carried  their  rebellion  against  for 
malism  so  far  that  there  could  be  found  no 
stiffer  formalists  than  themselves.  This  is  an  old 
story,  in  literary,  artistic,  political,  and  religious 
revivals. 

Emerson's  rawness  and  roughness  were  not  due 
to  the  fact  that  he  was  trying  to  break  down  one 
school,  or  set  up  another.  They  resulted  from 
his  ever-present  idea  of  the  commanding  impor 
tance  of  the  thought,  and  the  insignificance  and 
relative  unimportance  of  the  means  of  expression. 
But  Emerson,  like  Wordsworth  before  him  and 
Browning  beside  him,  was  deliberate  in  his  poetic 
utterance.  If  not  always  artistic  in  form,  it  was 
because  he  did  not  choose  to  be.  Flat,  and 
foolish,  and  egotistic  as  Wordsworth  seems  at 
times,  he  was  the  poet  who  sang  to  us  of  "  faith 
become  a  passionate  intuition  ; "  of  a  violet 

"  Fair  as  a  star  when  only  one 
Is  shining  in  the  sky ;  " 

of 

"  The  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land, 
The  consecration,  and  the  poet's  dream." 

The  bard  of  "Peter  Bell"  was  also  the  bard  of 
the  "Ode  on  Immortality"  and  the  sonnet  on 
sleeping  London.  So,  too,  whatever  flaws  we 
find  in  Emerson's  verse,  we  also  find  such  lordly 
and  lovely  lines  as 

"  Earth  proudly  wears  the  Parthenon 
As  the  best  gem  upon  her  zone." 


148  American  Literature. 

lines  that  in  themselves  are  a  gem  of  poetry. 
Wordsworth  hardly  seemed  to  know  when  he  was 
on  the  mountain-tops  of  art,  and  when  in  the 
valleys  ;  but  Emerson  would  measure  his  every 
mood  and  mental  state.  Said  he  : 

"  But  in  the  mud  and  scum  of  things 
There  alway,  alway  something  sings ; " 

and  that  song  in  his  catholic  ear  was  as  sacred  as 
the  song  of  the  spheres.  He  was  deliberate  in  his 
noblest  lines  and  most  polished  poems ;  he  was 
no  less  deliberate  in  his  quaintest,  most  irregular, 
and  cacophonous  verses.  The  poetry  of  Emer 
son  must  be  taken  as  it  is.  Its  writer  had  the 
power,  when  he  chose,  to  give  it  all  needed 
adornment  of  art ;  he  also  had  the  will,  when  he 
deemed  it  necessary,  to  utter  his  thought  in  the 
baldest  form.  With  him  the  must  was  more 
potent  than  the  may ;  he  cared  more  for  the  why 
thaa  for  the  how. 

We  thus  can  see  and  understand  the  position  of 
the    poetry  of    Emerson  in  the  literature  of  his 
country  and  his  time.     It  is  more  truthful  to  calP 
him  a  great  man  who  wrote  poems,  than  to  call 
him  a  great  poet.      It  seems  to  me  essential   to 
remember    this     definition,    that   we    may   avoid 
errors  in  either  direction.      His  poetry  at  its  best . 
reaches    heights    which     Longfellow    or     Bryant 
could    not   attain.     Its    august    purpose   renders 
comparison  with  the  verse  of   Poe  utterly  out   of 
the  question.     Emerson  was  a  greater  man  than> 
any  one  of  these  three ;  and   once  in  a  while  he 


Emerson  as  Poet. 


149 


rewrote  lines  as  artistic  as  Longfellow's,  as  stately  as 
V  Bryant's,  as  melodiously  beautiful  as  Poe's.  He 
was  more  than  an  eminent  prose  writer  who  pro 
duced  verse.  His  poetry  would  give  him  a  high 
reputation  were  his  prose  blotted  out.  And  yet  — 
his  prose  overshadows  his  verse  ;  his  character  as 
literary  force  seems  higher  than  his  rank  as  poet. 
His  three  hundred  pages  of  poems,  read  them  and 
praise  them  and  revere  them  as  we  will,  butx 
restate  concisely  the  message  of  his  essays.  So 
long  as  this  result  was  chosen  by  Emerson  him 
self,  his  readers  may  well  accept  it  without 
regrets  or  attempts  at  denial.  He  wrote,  as  one 
of  his  fragments  tells  us, 

"  For  thought,  and  not  praise ; 
Thought  is  the  wages 
For  which  I  sell  days, 
Will  gladly  sell  ages, 
And  willing  grow  old, 
Deaf  and  dumb  and  blind  and  cold." 

Though  Emerson  conscientiously  wrote  "  for 
thought  and  not  praise,"  from  the  beginning  of 
his  career  to  its  close,  he  could  in  a  The  Test  of 
limited  but  true  sense  be  called  a  p°Pularity- 
popular  author,  even  before  his  death.  Not  one 
word  in  his  lectures  or  essays  was  apparently 
written  with  popularity  in  view,  yet  he  slowly 
climbed  to  the  sure  height  of  a  deserved  renown 
based  on  high  achievement.  I  do  not  mean,  of 
course,  that  he  ever  found  half  as  many  readers  as 
the  contemporary  novelists  of  a  clay,  whose 


150  American  Literature. 

methods  and  movements  the  newspapers  think  so 
important  ;  but  he  found  a  public  of  thoughtful, 
studious,  benefited,  and  sometimes  raptly  enthu 
siastic  readers,  which  could  both  relatively  and 
absolutely  be  called  a  large  public.  But  these 
readers  were  affected  by  his  prose  more  than  by 
his  verse,  in  the  mathematical  ratio  in  which  the 
quantity  of  his  prose  exceeds  that  of  his  verse. 
In  Emerson's  lifetime  appeared  two  volumes  of 
poems,  and  one  book  of  selections  from  the  two. 
After  his  death  was  published  a  complete  edition, 
with  previously  uncollected  fragments.  These 
collections  had  a  circulation  small  beside  that  of 
the  books  of  any  other  American  poet  of  equal 
standing.  This  fact  could  not  have  been  due  to 
the  obscurity  of  Emerson's  poems  as  a  whole,  for 
some  are  "sun-clear";  nor  to  the  remoteness  of 
their  themes,  for  some  treat  of  the  simplest  and 
nearest  emotions  or  natural  objects  ;  nor  to  their 
small  bulk,  which  was  greater  than  that  of  Gray's 
or  Poe's  poetry.  Its  cause,  as  I  have  said,  is  that 
Emerson  delivered  his  one  message  in  many 
forms,  not  all  of  which  were  designed  for  all 
hearers  and  readers. 

All  the  great  poets  of  the  world  have  been  great 

poetical    artists.       In    Homer,    Sophocles,    Virgil, 

Dante,  Milton,  Shakespeare,  we  find  not  only  the 

power  of  thinking  grandly  and  freshly,   but  also 

of    constructing    nobly    and    decorating 

Emerson  and  f  * 

the  Greater      beautifully.      N  ot    many   can    endure    a 

comparison  with  these  great  makers  of 

the  world's    verse  ;  but  if  we  pass   to   the  list  of 


Emerson  as  Poet.  151 

poets  of  the  lesser  order, — to  Sappho,  Horace, 
Petrarch,  Heine,  Gray,  Wordsworth, — we  discover 
a  similar  union  of  the  internal  with  the  external, 
so  that  both  make  a  poetic  whole.  Those  who 
aver  that  great  nuggets  of  unpolished  poetic 
thought  are  to  be  accepted  as  readily  as  "  Hamlet," 
the  odes  of  Sappho  and  Horace,  Gray's  "  Elegy," 
or  Wordsworth's  best  sonnets,  must  revise  the 
entire  intellectual  and  artistic  history  of  the  world. 
It  is  perfectly  true  that 

"Thought  is  deeper  than  all  speech, 
Feeling  deeper  than  all  thought," 

but  it  is  equally  true  that  wisdom  must  be  married 
to  immortal  verse  before  it  can  pretend  to  be  im 
mortal  poetry.  Feeling  that  cannot  express  itself  in 
formulated  thought,  thought  that  cannot  embody 
itself  in  fit  speech,  speech  that  cannot  be  framed 
according  to  the  noblest  verbal  art,  may  be  true 
and  valuable,  but  are  not  poetry.  We  do  not 
propose  to  revise  the  artistic  canons  of  all  literary 
history  for  the  benefit  of  those  who  aver  that  the 
poet  need  only  throw  before  us  a  mass  of  jewels 
and  dirt,  leaving  to  us  the  cleansing  and  polishing 
of  the  occasional  glittering  stones.  Emerson 
makes  for  the  poet  no  such  claim  as  this.  When 
he  gives  us  plain,  compact  instructions  or  reflec 
tions  he  pretends  to  do  no  more.  When  he  gives 
us  deep  thought  in  artistic  form,  then  and 
then  only  does  he  tacitly  rank  himself  among  the 
poets.  Sometimes  he  does  the  one,  sometimes 
the  other.  There  is  enough  of  his  verse  of  the 


152  American  Literature. 

latter  kind  to  entitle  him  to  the  name  of  poet  in 
the  usual  limited  sense.  Art  and  form,  lovely  and 
self-contained,  find  their  place  in  not  a  few  of  his 
poems.  When  he  courted  the  muse  she  smiled 
upon  him ;  when  he  turned  his  back  upon  her  he 
made  no  pretence  of  standing  in  her  favor. 

It  may  at  first  seem  a  paradox  to   say  that  the 

quality  of  evenness  marks  the  poetry  of  Emerson. 

No  American  writer  of  verse  more  freely  followed 

his   will,    in    the    choice    and    treatment 

Evenness  of        r 

Emerson's  or  subjects,  but  there  is  no  essential 
difference  between  his  earliest  verse 
and  his  latest.  The  chronological  order,  so  im 
portant  in  studying  the  writings  of  some  poets,  is 
almost  valueless  in  the  case  of  Emerson.  We 
know  that  certain  of  his  poems  were  produced  in 
his  youth,  and  others  in  his  maturity  or  old  age. 
Some  were  written  for  occasions,  or  were  drawn 
forth  by  that  great  civil  war  which  threw  its  shad 
ows  across  the  seventh  decade  of  the  sage's  life. 
But  this  knowledge  is  interesting,  rather  than 
essential,  in  the  particular  instance,  and  not  valu 
able  in  the  general  estimate.  In  one  of  the 
stanzas  just  quoted  Emerson  reminds  us  that 

"  Spring  still  makes  spring  in  the  mind 
When  sixty  years  are  told." 

The  noble  lines  are  worth  repeating.  No  modern 
writer  more  clearly  shows  the  truth  that  immortal 
existence  is  an  eternal  now,  notwithstanding  the 
correlated  law  of  beginnings  and  developments. 
Not  even  the  fact  that  the  man  Emerson  outlived 


Emerson  as  Poet.  153 

his  mental  powers  can  blind  us  to  the  perception 
that  the  mind  Emerson  was  of  perennial  freshness, 
youthful  and  mature  at  once.  This  statement  is 
no  idle  compliment,  in  words  that  have  lost  their 
meaning ;  it  goes  to  explain  the  poet's  apprehen 
sion  of  remote  India  on  the  one  hand  and  modern 
Massachusetts  on  the  other.  He  was  as  old  as 
the  mystic  Brahman  and  as  young  as  a  Middlesex 
stripling.  His  heart  and  thought  included  the 
Hindoo  seer  and  the  Concord  farmer.  Who 
but  he  would  write  as  the  first  line  of  a  poem 
bearing  the  far-off  and  ancient  title,  "  Hamatreya," 
such  a  rugged  list  of  contemporary  American  sur 
names  as 

"  Minott,  Lee,  Willard,  Hosmer.  Meriam,  Flint "  ? 

But  in  such  apparent  eccentricity  and  roughness 
he  was  not  careless  but  deliberate.  Here,  and  in 
a  hundred  other  instances,  he  was  stating  hoary 
truth  in  the  every-day  language  of  his  neighbors. 
He  frankly  said  : 

"  What  all  the  books  of  ages  paint,  I  have." 

In  poetry,  as  in  prose,  Emerson  prepared  his 
bits  of  material  when  he  would,  and  afterward 
elaborated  them  into  symmetrical  wholes,  at  leisure 
or  on  the  fit  occasion.  Some  of  these  bits,  never 
elaborated,  but  printed  posthumously  as  mere 
"  Fragments  on  the  Poet  and  the  Poetic  Gift," 
are  in  themselves  better  than  many  poems  which 
have  cost  their  authors 

"Long  days  of  labor 
And  nights  devoid  of  ease." 


154  American  Literature. 

Indeed,  we  have  no  reason  to  doubt  that,  in  some 
true  sense,  Emerson  labored  long  on  such  fine 
though  fragmentary  work  as  many  of  these  incom 
plete  poems  or  parts  of  poems.  Let  us  read  some 
of  them  at  random,  without  classification,  just  as 
they  were  apparently  written,  and  without  trying 
to  give  them  titles  or  explanations  which  they 
lack  but  do  not  need : 

That  book  is  good 

Which  puts  me  in  a  working  mood. 

Unless  to  thought  is  added  will, 
Apollo  is  an  imbecile. 

What  parts,  what  gems,  what  colors  shine, — 
Ah,  but  I  miss  the  grand  design. 

Forebore  the  ant-hill,  shunned  to  tread, 
In  mercy,  on  one  little  head. 

The  brook  sings  on,  but  sings  in  vain, 
Wanting  the  echo  in  my  brain. 

On  bravely  through  the  sunshine  and  the  showers! 
Time  hath  its  work  to  do  and  we  have  ours. 

Thou  shalt  not  try 

To  plant  thy  shrivelled  pedantry 

On  the  shoulders  of  the  sky. 

Teach  me  your  mood,  O  patient  stars  ! 

Who  climb  each  night  the  ancient  sky, 
Leaving  on  space  no  shade,  no  scars, 

No  trace  of  age,  no  fear  to  die. 

If  bright  the  sun,  he  tarries, 

All  day  his  song  is  heard  ; 
And  when  he  goes,  he  carries 

No  more  baggage  than  a  bird. 


Emerson  as  Poet.  155 

But  Nature  whistled  with  all  her  winds, 
Did  as  she  pleased  and  went  her  way. 

The  passing  moment  is  an  edifice 
Which  the  omnipotent  cannot  rebuild. 

Tell  men  what  they  knew  before; 
Paint  the  prospect  from  their  door. 

From  such  fragments  as  these,  quoted  as  left  in 
Emerson's  manuscript  and  printed  by  his  literary 
executor  after  his  death,  there  is  no  long  step  to 
the  finish  and  completeness  of  his  stately  poem 
entitled  "Days:" 

Daughters  of  Time,  the  hypocritic  days, 

Muffled  and  dumb  like  barefoot  dervishes, 

And  marching  single  in  an  endless  file, 

Bring  diadems  and  fagots  in  their  hands. 

To  each  they  offer  gifts  after  his  will, 

Bread,  kingdoms,  stars,  and  sky  that  holds  them  all. 

I,  in  my  pleached  garden,  watched  the  pomp, 

Forgot  my  morning  wishes,  hastily 

Took  a  few  herbs  and  apples,  and  the  Day 

Turned  and  departed  silent.     I,  too  late, 

Under  her  solemn  fillet  saw  the  scorn. 

This  posthumously  published  quatrain  is  in  its 
way  as  complete  as  an  epic  : 

Go,  if  thou  wilt,  ambrosial  flower, 

Go  match  thee  with  thy  seeming  peers ; 

I  will  wait  Heaven's  perfect  hour 
Through  the  innumerable  years. 

The  thoughts  and  wordings  of  the  last  pages 
of  Emerson's  volume  of  poems  send  the  reader's 
mind  wandering  back  through  the  centuries,  from 
Walter  Savage  Landor  to  the  Greek  anthology. 


156  American  Literature. 

Emerson,  never  a  deep  classicist,  was  sometimes 
half  Greek  in  his  way  of  looking  at  things,  and 
also  in  his  way  of  wording  his  thought.  The 
statement  seems  either  an  exaggeration  or  a 
platitude,  but  I  know  not  how  to  express  my 
meaning  in  other  language. 

The  compactness  of  Emerson's  writing, 
whether  in  prose  or  in  verse,  is  apparent  to  the 
His  concise-  most  careless  reader.  The  quatrain  I 
ness.  have  just  quoted,  "  Teach  me  your 

mood,  O  patient  stars ",  really  includes  the 
thought  and  the  lesson  of  the  eight  stanzas  com 
prising  one  of  Matthew  Arnold's  best  known 
poems,  that  beginning : 

"  Weary  of  myself,  and  sick  of  asking 

What  I  am,  and  what  I  ought  to  be, 
At  this  vessel's  prow  I  stand,  which  bears  me 
Forward,  forward,  o'er  the  starlit  sea." 

Emerson's  four  lines  surpass,  I  think,  the  best 
four  lines  of  Arnold's  thirty-two,  which  are  : 

"  From  the  intense,  clear,  star-sown  vault  of  Heaven, 

Over  the  lit  sea's  unquiet  way, 
In  the  rustling  night-air  came  the  answer : 

'  Wouldst  thou  be  as  these  are  ?  Live  as  they.' " 

The  superiority  extends  not  only  to  the  quatrain 
as  compared  with  the  poem,  but  to  the  choice  of 
particular  epithets  and  phrases.  One  of  Mrs. 
Browning's  best  sonnets, 

"  '  O  dreary  life  !  >  we  cry,  « O  dreary  life,' " 

has  the  same  theme  and  general  method ;  and 
though  it  comes  nearer  Emerson's  felicity,  with 


Emerson  as  Poet.  157 

"  *  *  the  unwasted  stars  that  pass 
In  their  old  glory," 

it  does  not  surpass  that  felicity.  Mrs.  Browning's 
thought  was  sometimes  fused  and  compacted  by 
the  fires  of  intense  feeling,  but  Emerson's  was 
made  concise  by  calm  and  cold  selection.  Yet 
his  calm  is  not  the  calm  of  Arnold,  himself 
sometimes  as  diffuse  as  Mrs.  Browning ;  but  that 
of  one  who  will  not  speak  or  sing  at  all  until  the 
urgency  of  his  poetic  desire  is  joined  with  the 
sense  of  fitness  of  poetic  expression.  This  state 
ment  applies  even  to  the  queerest  and  most 
rapidly  moving  of  Emerson's  metres.  Aside  from 
the  question  of  the  value  of  his  poems,  we  cannot 
deny  that  they  were  the  best  he  could  write. 
The  apt  union  of  words  and  thought  in  "The 
Snow-Storm"  is  as  good  a  proof  of  this  «TheSnow- 
proposition  as  can  be  found :  storm." 

Announced  by  all  the  trumpets  of  the  sky, 
Arrives  the  snow,  and,  driving  o'er  the  fields, 
Seems  nowhere  to  alight :  the  whited  air 
Hides  hills  and  woods,  the  river,  and  the  heaven, 
And  veils  the  farm-house  at  the  garden's  end. 
The  sled  and  traveller  stopped,  the  courier's  feet 
Delayed,  all  friends  shut  out,  the  housemates  sit 
Around  the  radiant  fireplace,  enclosed 
In  a  tumultuous  privacy  of  storm. 

Come  see  the  north  wind's  masonry. 
Out  of  an  unseen  quarry  evermore 
Furnished  with  tile,  the  fierce  artificer 
Curves  his  white  bastions  with  projected  roof 
Round  every  winded  stake,  or  tree,  or  door. 
Speeding,  the  myriad-handed,  his  wild  work 


158  American  Literature. 

So  fanciful,  so  savage,  naught  cares  he 
For  number  or  proportion.     Mockingly, 
On  coop  or  kennel  he  hangs  Parian  wreaths ; 
A  swan-like  form  invests  the  hidden  thorn ; 
Fills  up  the  farmer's  lane  from  wall  to  wall, 
Maugre  the  farmer's  sighs  ;  and,  at  the  gate, 
A  tapering  turret  overtops  the  work. 
And  when  his  hours  are  numbered,  and  the  world 
Is  all  his  own,  retiring,  as  he  were  not, 
Leaves,  when  the  sun  appears,  astonished  Art 
To  mimic  in  slow  structures,  stone  by  stone, 
Built  in  an  age,  the  mad  wind's  night-work  ; 
The  frolic  architecture  of  the  snow. 

This  is  as  simple  a  nature-poem  as  Whittier's 
"  Snow-Bound," — less  subjective,  indeed,  and 
much  less  subjective  than  two  other  of  New 
England's  notable  winter-pieces,  Longfellow's 
t(  Snowflakes "  and  Lowell's  "  The  First  Snow- 
Fall."  The  seer  and  the  mystic  could  treat  na 
ture  in  the  simplest  descriptive  fashion  when  he 
had  no  other  purpose  in  view ;  and  seldom  was  he 
so  inexcusably  inaccurate  an  observer  as  in  the 
first  line  of  the  poem  just  quoted.  No  simpler  or 
more  Saxon  language  need  be  asked  than  that  in 
which  are  written  such  poems  as  the  "  The  Rho- 
dora,"  "The  Humble-Bee,"  "  Woodnotes,"  or 
"  Ode  to  Beauty,"  some  of  which  teach  deep 
spiritual  and  vital  lessons.  Johnsonian  expres 
sions  and  Latinized  words  are  also  conspicuously 
absent  from  "  The  Problem  "  and  "  Initial,  Daemo 
nic,  and  Celestial  Love,"  despite  the  portentous 
title  of  the  latter.  This  poet's  method  of  teaching 
is  well-illustrated  in  his  "  Hamatreya."  He  begins 


Emerson  as  Poet. 

by    giving    a    list    of    some    of   his    neighboring 

families    in    Concord ;    tells    how   they 

owned  land,  raised  crops,  added  field  to 

field,  and  then  were  laid  under  their  own  sod,  "  a 

lump  of  mould  the   more."     Then   comes,  in   the 

"  Earth-Song,"  the  moral  of  it  • 

Mine  and  yours; 

Mine,  not  yours. 

Earth  endures; 

Stars  abide — 

Shine  down  in  the  old  sea; 

Old  are  the  shores; 

But  where  are  old  men? 

I  who  have  seen  much, 

Such  have  I  never  seen. 

The  lawyer's  deed 

Ran  sure, 

In  tail, 

To  them,  and  to  their  heirs 

Who  shall  succeed, 

Without  fail, 

Forevermore. 

Here  is  the  land 
Shaggy  with  wood, 
With  its  old  valley, 
Mound  and  flood. 
But  the  heritors? — 
Fled  like  the  flood's  foam. 
The  lawyer,  and  the  laws, 
And  the  kingdom, 
Clean  swept  herefrom. 

They  called  me  theirs, 
Who  so  controlled  me; 


160  American  Literature. 

Yet  every  on 

Wished  to  stay,  and  is  gone. 

How  am  I  theirs 

If  they  cannot  hold  me, 

But  I  hold  them  ? — 

When  I  heard  the  earth-song, 

I  was  no  longer  brave  ; 

My  avarice  cooled 

Like  lust  in  the  chill  of  the  grave. 

In  bold  simplicity  this  curious  "  Earth-Song " 
reminds  one  of  the  earliest  poetry  of  the  Saxons, 
Teutons,  or  Icelanders.  The  suggestion  of  parts 
of  the  "  Elder  Edda  "  is  peculiarly  strong,  and  in 
grim  earnestness  the  poem  also  recalls  the  expres 
sions  of  the  Hebrew  psalmist.  If  Emerson  had 
called  "  Hamatreya"  a  sermon,  with  Psalm  xlix : 
10,  ii  for  its  text,  he  would  have  been  strictly 
accurate  ;  for  what  is  the  poem  but  an  expansion 
of  the  idea  of  the  two  verses  of  the  Hebrew  poet : 

"The  fool  and  the  brutish  together  perish, 
And  leave  their  wealth  to  others. 

Their   inward   thought  is,  that  their   houses   shall  con 
tinue  forever, 

And  their  dwelling-places  to  all  generations ; 
They  call  their  lands  after  their  own  names." 

On  the  heights  of  poetry  one  is  often  reminded  of 
^Eschylus,  Sophocles,  Dante,  Shakespeare,  Mil 
ton,  but  not  less  truly  of  David,  Job,  Isaiah,  and 
Joel.  We  have  become  so  accustomed  to  call  the 
Bible  "  holy,"  and  to  make  it  a  fetich,  that  we  half 
forget  to  call  it  literature.  Emerson  and  the 


Emerson  as  Poet.  161 

greater  minds,  however,  have  not  forgotten  the 
literary  character  of  its  best  books,  which  they 
paraphrase  both  consciously  and  unconsciously. 

Emerson's  conciseness  of  expression  and  his 
loftiness  of  religious  thought  may  further  be 
illustrated  by  quoting,  entire,  one  other  poem, 
that  which  he  entitled  '•  Brahma."  This  much 
discussed  and  almost  famous  utterance 
appeared  in  the  first  number  (November, 
1857)  of  The  Atlantic  Monthly,  and  stirred  those 
circles  in  which  the  name  of  Emerson  was  con 
sidered  honorable.  Not  even  the  members  of  the 
Emersonian  cult  were  able  to  give  it  unanimous 
approval,  or  to  aver  that  they  all  understood  its 
meaning.  To  the  uninitiated  it  was  food  for 
laughter,  or  at  best  an  interesting  puzzle,  about  as 
intelligible  to  a  modern  reader  as  the  Riddles  of 
Cynewulf — the  hardest  reading  in  the  English 
language.  Emerson's  biographer  *  says,  with  his 
habitual  neatness  of  wit,  that  "  to  the  average 
Western  mind  it  is  the  nearest  approach  to  a  Tor 
ricellian  vacuum  of  intelligibility  that  language 
can  pump  out  of  itself."  I  do  not  read  Emerson 
on  my  knees,  sure  that  his  every  word  is  crammed 
with  wisdom  ;  and  I  make  not  the  slightest  claim 
to  peculiar  literary  insight.  Certainly,  too,  one 
must  feel  a  little  diffidence  in  questioning  so 
deliberate  a  statement  as  Dr.  Holmes  makes  when 
he  says  that  "  Brahma  "  was  "  one  of  his  [Emer 
son's]  spiritual  divertisements  "  ;  and  that  Emer 
son  merely  "  amused  himself  with  putting  in 

*  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  "  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,"  p.  397. 
ii 


1 62  American  Literature. 

verse  "  "  the  '  Yoga '  doctrine  of  Brahmanism." 
"  The  oriental  side  of  Emerson's  nature  delighted 
itself  in  these  narcotic  dreams,  born  in  the  land  of 
the  poppy  and  of  hashish.  They  lend  a  peculiar 
charm  to  his  poems,  but  it  is  not  worth  while  to 
try  to  construct  a  philosophy  out  of  them."  Of 
course  not ;  Emerson  would  have  been  the  last 
to  claim  that  "  Brahma,"  or  fifty  poems  combined, 
offered  the  reader  a  complete  philosophy.  But 
I  cannot  call  "  Brahma  "  a  "  divertisement  "  until 
I  am  ready  to  apply  the  same  term  to  Coleridge's 
"  Hymn  Before  Sunrise  in  the  Vale  of  Cha- 
mouni,"  or  Shelley's  "  Life  of  Life,  thy  lips 
enkindle."  The  poem  is  dramatic  ;  Emerson  is 
not  speaking  for  himself,  save  as  every  dramatic 
or  subjective  poet  must ;  and  his  theme  and 
reflection  are  of  a  far-away  land  and  soul.  But 
"  Brahma,"  given  its  subject,  is  simple  and 
austere.  Certainly  it  does  not  belong  with  the 
class  of  poems  to  which  Dr.  Holmes  by  implica 
tion  assigns  it  when  he  says  a  little  farther  on  : 
"  Emerson's  reflections  in  the  '  transcendental ' 
mood  do  beyond  question  sometimes  irresistibly 
suggest  the  close  neighborhood  of  the  sublime  to 
the  ridiculous.  But  very  near  that  precipitous 
border-land  there  is  a  charmed  region  where,  if 
the  statelier  growths  of  philosophy  die  out  and 
disappear,  the  flowers  of  poetry  next  the  very 
edge  of  the  chasm  have  a  peculiar  and  mysterious 
beauty."  Nothing  would  be  easier  than  to  cull 
from  Emerson  lines,  stanzas,  and  whole  poems 
that  seem,  and  are,  across  the  border-land  of  the 


Emerson  as  Poet.  163 

ridiculous.  Emerson  himself  tacitly  acknowl 
edged  the  fact,  in  his  revisions  ;  and  there  is  no 
reason  why  his  students  should  deny  it.  To 
prove  it  by  quotations  would  be  superfluous,  for 
the  winnowing  of  time  has  already  thrown  to 
oblivious  winds  most  of  the  Emersonian  chaff, 
which,  after  all,  is  but  a  very  fraction  of  his  poetic 
crop.  Enough  that  is  good  remains,  and 
"  Brahma,"  unless  I  am  sadly  mistaken,  is  a  part 
of  this  selected  and  choice  remainder.  Read  it 
again  : 

If  the  red  slayer  thinks  he  slays, 
Or  if  the  slain  think  he  is  slain, 

They  know  not  well  the  subtle  ways 
I  keep,  and  pass,  and  turn  again. 

Far  or  forgot  to  me  is  near; 

Shadow  and  sunlight  are  the  same ; 
The  vanished  gods  to  me  appear ; 

And  one  to  me  are  shame  and  fame. 

They  reckon  ill  who  leave  me  out ; 

When  me  they  fly,  I  am  the  wings ; 
I  am  the  doubter  and  the  doubt, 

And  I  the  hymn  the  Brahmin  sings. 

The  strong  gods  pine  for  my  abode, 
And  pine  in  vain  the  sacred  Seven  ; 

But  thou,  meek  lover  of  the  good! 

Find  me,  and  turn  thy  back  on  heaven. 

A  paraphrase  of  this  brief  poem  seems  almost 
superfluous   and    absurd,    and    cannot,    in    prose, 


164  American  Literature. 

equal  its  terseness  of  expression  :  If  he  who  kills 
think  that  his  act  is  final,  if  he  who  is  killed  think 
that  he  falls  without  present  part  in  the  divine 
plan,  or  future  hope,  neither  has  any  idea  of  that 
rule  of  the  universe  which  bides  long  for  the  full 
adjustment  after  seeming  indifference  and  delay. 
Divine  power  is  omnipresent  and  omniscient ;  in 
its  plans  virtue  and  vice  play  their  appointed 
parts  ;  of  it  the  rude  divinities  of  the  past  were 
prototypes  ;  and  its  measures  of  man's  success  or 
failure  are  not  the  world's  measures.  To  be  with 
out  God  in  the  world  is  to  die  to  all  true  life,  for 
he  is  all  and  in  all ;  he  recognizes  his  own  among 
those  deemed  heretical,  as  well  as  in  the  services 
of  the  "  orthodox "  churches  or  religions  of  any 
age.  The  greatest  and  best  have  longed  for  him, 
but  he  is  found  most  by  those  who  are  meek  and 
self-sacrificing,  and  who  do  not  good  works  for  the 
mere  hope  of  reward. 

Thus  does  Emerson,  from  an  oriental  text,  re 
state  the  lesson  of  man's  relation  to  him  whom  the 
Anglo-Saxon  poet  named  in  that  mighty  word, 
"  All-walda,"  and  whom  the  Hebrews  called 
Jehovah.  Some  parts  of  the  poem  could  be  paral 
leled  from  the  words  of  the  Bible,  which  instantly 
occur  to  the  mind  in  connection  with  such  lines  as 
"  Far  or  forgot  to  me  is  near,"  or  "  When  me  they 
fly,  I  am  the  wings."  The  paraphrase  in  the  last 
instance  must  have  been  intentional.  That  God 
is  in  nature,  that  man  aspires  to  complete  com 
munion  with  God,  and  that  high  love  is  the  means 


Emerson  as  Poet. 


165 


General 


toward  this  communion  —  if  this  thought  is  obscure 
then  the  founders  of  Christianity  were  themselves 
riddle-makers.* 

The  poetry  of  Emerson  is  valued,  at  least  in 
some  of  its  parts,  both  by  those  who  find  enjoy 
ment  in  smoothly  lyrical  expression  of  common 
and  obvious  meditation  or  observa- 
tion,  and  by  those  who  are  willing 
to  give  to  verse  a  deep  study,  if  but  that 
study  be  rewarded  by  the  discovery  of  intrinsically 
valuable  or  novel  thought.  Here  are  pure  sunshine 
and  simple  bird  songs  —  the  mere  pleasure  of  exist 
ence  and  joyous  perception  ;  here,  too,  are  intense 
peerings  toward  zenith  and  nadir.  Emerson's 
verse,  like  his  prose,  might  not  inaptly  be  called 
"  Thoughts  on  the  Universe,"  —  the  title  of  the 
magnum  opits  of  Master  Byles  Gridley,  in  Dr. 
Holmes'  novel  "The  Guardian  Angel."  The 
universe,  in  Emerson's  eyes,  was  a  great  and  ever- 
present  ideal  teacher,  whose  lessons  he  studied 
and  tried  to  interpret  for  others.  Sentient  and 

*  Interesting  parallelisms  between  "  Brahma"  and  "Hamatreya"  and 
passages  from  Eastern  and  other  sources  which  may  have  been  suggestive 
to  Emerson's  mind  are  given  by  several  correspondents  of  The  Critic,  Feb. 
4,  Feb.  18,  and  March  3,  1888.  Dr.  C.  A.  Bartol's  communication  of  the 
last  date  is  so  valuable  a  comment  that  it  is  worth  preservation  here  : 

"  The  store  Emerson  at  one  time  set  by  this  poem  ['  Brahma  ']  appears 
from  his  resisting,  as  Mr.  J.  T.  Fields  told  me  he  did,  a  proposal  to  omit  it 
from  a  collection  the  publishers  were  making  of  his  works.  This  he  said 
must  go  in,  whatever  else  stayed  out.  Not  that  he  thought  much  of  his 
verses  in  general.  To  Dr.  F.  H.  Hedge  he  said  that  he  composed  lines 
because  he  happened  to  have  a  nice  lead-pencil  and  some  good  paper.  He 
told  Mr.  Sanborn  he  doubted  if  he  could  write  poetry,  to  which  the  reply 
was,  '  Some  of  us  think  you  can  write  nothing  else.'  But  he  disparaged 
his  own  rhymes  and  put  none  of  them  into  '  Parnassus.'  Perhaps  it  was 
his  admiration  of  the  Oriental  genius  that  made  him  insist  on  the  claim  of 


1 66  American  Literature. 

non-sentient  Nature,  with  the  individual  and  self- 
reliant  soul  at  the  top,  mirrors  for  that  soul  the 
spiritual  element,  instructs  and  helps  it,  and  fore 
tells  the  future  which  its  Maker  has  in  store  for 
the  upward-striving  creatures  made  in  his  own 
image.  This  sentence  may  be  said,  not  unfairly, 
to  be  the  key-note  of  Emerson's  oft-expressed 
answers  to  the  riddle  of  life.  The  answers  are 
as  I  have  said — in  substance  identical,  whether 
expressed  in  poetry  or  in  prose  ;  the  poems,  at 
their  best,  are  more  concise  than  the  prose,  more 
intense,  and  more  ideal  in  thought  and  expression  ; 
at  their  worst,  they  are  more  obscure,  fragmentary, 
and  unsatisfactory.  The  union  of  blind  thought 
and  crude  art  is  a  dreary  thing,  but  it  is  a  thing 
too  often  present  in  Emerson's  verse.  His  poetry 
was  his  serenest  heaven  and  his  most  convenient 
rubbish-heap. 

Some  of  the  statements  thus  far  made  are  suf 
ficient  to  explain  the  present  and  probably  the 
future  lack  of  the  highest  fame  for  Emerson's 


Brahma.  It  went,  indeed,  to  the  heart  of  his  religion  and  philosophy,  in 
which  the  One  was  all.  To  a  friend  doubting  immortality,  he  said  such  a 
question  betrayed  lack  of  intellect.  But  he  did  not  think  Jesus  taught  it  as 
a  doctrine  apart  from  life.  In  his  last  days  he  affirmed  for  the  soul  iden 
tity  despite  death,  whether  he  meant  individual  persistence,  or  the  oneness 
with  the  Father  Jesus  affirmed,  or  both  as  conjoined  in  the  same  truth. 
What  he  resented  was  any  implication  of  that  truth  with  a  particular 
period,  here  or  hereafter,  of  time.  Infinite  Presence  forbade,  with  him, 
consideration  of  there  or  then.  His  idea  of  spirit  as  eternal  and  its  own 
evidence  disinclined  him  to  spiritualism  or  the  acceptance  of  any  prodigy 
as  proof,  or  to  transmigration  as  the  process  of  survival.  Yet  the  charm 
for  him  of  speculation  in  all  the  religious  books  of  the  far  East  indicates  a 
peculiar  constitution  in  an  American,  and  is  one  of  the  most  interesting 
facts  in  our  literary  history." 


Emerson  as  Poet.  167 

verse.     Popularity  is  a  relative  term  ;  in 

r  J  'Its  Future. 

one  sense  Sophocles,  Dante,  and  Shake 
speare  are  not  popular.  Without  stopping  to 
discuss  this  broad  question,  it  is  evident  that 
Emerson,  though  deserving,  as  we  have  seen,  to 
be  called  a  favored  writer,  is  not  popular  as 
poet,  in  the  sense  in  which  we  apply  the  adjective 
to  Shelley  or  Keats,  Bryant  or  Longfellow,  for 
instance.  His  own  prose  has  reached  many  highly 
intelligent  minds  to  which  his  verse  is  still  com 
paratively  unwelcome.  This  fact  is  not  wholly 
due  to  the  general  intelligibility  and  popularity  of 
prose  as  compared  with  poetry ;  for  it  is  equally 
true,  by  converse,  that  the  wings  of  song  can 
carry  a  thought  farther  afield  than  the  slow  steps 
of  prose ;  and  that  a  poem  is  more  likely  to  be 
widely  loved  than  is  an  essay.  Emerson's  own 
verse  shows  that  his  highest  and  noblest  poems, 
when  most  artistically  written,  are  the  most  widely 
popular.  Orphic  sayings,  bluntly  or  rudely  put, 
may  fail  because  of  their  bluntness ;  but  the  same 
high  thought,  nobly  sung  in  melodious  numbers, 
will  become  widely  current.  Shakespeare  is  not 
world-famous  because  he  is  superficial,  but  because 
he  fitly  words  the  deepest  thoughts  of  the  race. 
We  may  properly  conclude,  therefore,  that  the 
failure  of  a  part  of  Emerson's  poetry,  compared 
with  that  produced  by  minds  of  the  same  general 
literary  rank,  or  with  the  average  of  his  own  prose, 
was  his  own  fault  and  not  that  of  his  readers.  In 
a  certain  way  he  failed  for  the  same  reason  that 
the  classicist  Walter  Savage  Landor  failed ;  but 


1 68  American  Literature. 

Emerson's  prose,  of  course,  so  far  surpasses 
Landor's  that  it  throws  a  friendly  radiance  on  his 
kindred  verse.  Landor  was  a  poet  of  limited  but 
true  power,  who  also  wrote  prose  ;  Emerson  wrote 
both  poetry  and  prose,  for  an  identical  purpose ; 
the  likeness  between  Landor  and  Emerson  rests 
in  the  fact  that  they  did  not  impress  their  poetic 
gift  upon  the  world-heart  as  the  great  poet  ought 
to  do.  No  amount  of  special  pleading  can  deny 
the  fact  that  ultimate  high  success  is  the  final  seal 
of  the  poet's  mission. 

But  in  speaking  of  Emerson's  failure  the  term 
is  used  relatively,  and  with  reference  to  no 
more  than  a  part  of  his  verse.  He  wrote  poetry 
under  peculiar  circumstances  and  with  peculiar 
aims.  His  purposes  were  self-recognized,  and 
they  met  with  all  the  success  he 

Success  as  far  * 

as  Success  was   desired  or   expected.     His    limitations 

sought.  . 

and  terminations  were  known  to  none 
better  than  to  himself  : 

Best  boon  of  life  is  presence  of  a  Muse 
That  does  not  wish  to  wander,  comes  by  stealth, 
Divulging  to  the  heart  she  sets  on  flame 
No  popular  tale  or  toy,  no  cheap  renown. 

So  long  as  his  heart  was  set  on  flame  he  cared 
neither  for  cheap  renown  nor  for  high.  He 
knew  what  he  did  not  do,  or  could  not  do,  as  well 
as  what  he  did  and  could.  A  serene  nature  like 
his  would  be  the  last  to  complain  ;  it  made  the 
most  of  itself,  and  that  was  enough,  in  both  senses 
of  the  word.  Emerson  gave  us  so  much  that 


Emerson  as  Poet.  169 

there  is  no  reason  for  lamenting  that  he  did  not 
give  more.  He  was  neither  one  who  was  cut  off 
in  youth,  like  Keats,  nor  one  who  left  only 
exquisite  fragments,  like  Coleridge.  No  Ameri 
can  had  a  better  right  than  he  to  say  (in  his  poem 
entitled  "  Terminus  ")  that  he  obeyed  the  voice  at 
eve  obeyed  at  prime. 

The  poetry  of  Emerson,  whatever  its 
manner  or  theme,  is  the  poetry  of  acquiescence, 
optimism,  idealism,  spiritualism,  individualism. 
It  often  has  a  didactic  and  magisterial  The  Poetry  of 
tone,  rather  than  the  moralizing  tone  of  an°Ptimist. 
Wordsworth  or  Cowper.  "  Do  this,"  "shun  that," 
it  swiftly  says.  "  Be  not  a  fool,  not  a  money 
maker,  but  a  poet  and  a  lover  of  the  beautiful  and 
the  good."  Nature,  rightly  understood,  is  a  fit 
and  lovely  thing,  and  so  is  the  soul  at  its  best. 
Poetry  notes  and  intensely  describes  some  of  the 
qualities  of  each,  or  of  both.  It  was  no  wonder 
that  Emerson  anticipated,  in  half-a-dozen  poems, 
the  later  conclusions  of  the  evolutionists.  He 
was  the  singer  of  the  upward  march  of  nature  and 
the  onward  march  of  man.  His  poetic  field  was 
too  broad  to  be  tilled  thoroughly  in  many  parts. 
He  was  too  proverbial  to  be  a  great  constructive 
artist.  He  gives  us  saws,  sayings,  admonitions, 
flashes,  glimpses,  few  broad  constructed  pictures. 
With  these  we  are  content,  and  do  not  ask  him 
for  epics,  tragedies,  or  "Excursions,"  having 
poems  like  those  already  named  ;  or  "  Good-bye, 
Proud  World,"  "  The  Sphinx,"  and  the  «  Concord 
Hymn  "  ;  or  lines  like 


170  American  Literature. 

He  builded  better  than  he  knew  ; 

Earth  proudly  wears  the  Parthenon 
As  the  best  gem  upon  her  zone  ; 

The  silent  organ  loudest  chants 
The  master's  requiem  ; 

And  conscious  law  is  king  of  kings  ; 

Or  music  pours  on  mortals 
Its  beautiful  disdain. 

Emerson's  poetic  art  was  at  times  of  exquisite 
quality,  a  lovely  presentation  of  noble  thought. 
The  perfection  of  verbal  melody  exists  when  the 
reader  or  hearer  cannot  conceive  of  any  other  way 
of  singing  the  thought  ;  and  not  a  few  of  Emer 
son's  lines  or  poems  well  bear  this  test.  When 
this  art  gives  place  to  grim  force  we  do  not  feel, 
as  Lowell  said  of  Whittier,  that  Emerson  as  poet 
is 

"Both  singing  and  striking  in  front  of  the  war 
And  hitting  his  foes  with  the  mallet  of  Thor," 

for  Emerson^s  stern  strength  is  not  that  of  a 
Taillefer  but  rather  that  of  a  Saxon  law-maker. 
He  announces,  with  all  his  force,  but  does  not 
wage  war  in  defence  of  the  sayings  he  has  uttered 
with  oracular  positiveness.  Emerson  is  one  more 
illustration  of  the  fact,  too  often  forgotten,  that  a 
poet  can  be  forcible  and  lyrical  at  the  same  time  ; 
rooted  in  cold,  deep  thought  and  giving  to  the 
warm  winds  the  loveliest  flowers  of  beauty. 
Emerson,  more  than  any  American  poet,  severely 
tests  and  almost  defies  the  laws  of  poetics,  as  they 


Emerson  as  Poet.  171 

have  been  deduced  from  other  languages  and 
applied  to  English  scansion  ;  but  yet  from  his 
work  may  be  selected  many  an  example  proving 
anew  that  English  is  capable  of  fine  and  delib 
erate  metrical  and  melodious  effects.  He  who 
recognizes  Emerson's  aims  and  methods  will 
attempt  neither  to  prove,  all  his  failures  to  be 
glorious  successes,  which  men  are  too  blind  to 
see  ;  nor  to  declare  him  rugged  or  unmelodious  or 
obscure, — the  poet  who,  when  he  would,  could  sing 
so  sweet  and  clear  a  song. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

POETS     OF      FREEDOM       AND       CULTURE  :      WHITTIER, 
LOWELL    AND    HOLMES. 

IT  would  seem  natural  to  look  to  the  United 
States,  the  world's  most  successful  experiment  in 
democratic  government,  for  a  literature  peculiarly 
expressive  of  the  idea  of  freedom.  A  certain 
disappointment  is  therefore  felt  when  one  finds,  in 
two  centuries  and  a  half  of  English  his- 
Freeedomin  tory  on  American  soil,  so  much  second- 
u7eratcure.  hanci  and  second-rate  theology,  such 
weak  and  imitative  semi-religious  philos 
ophy,  and  not  a  little  that  is  conventional  or  neg 
ative  as  far  as  freedom  is  concerned,  in  Irving, 
Longfellow,  and  dozens  of  lesser  writers.  Is  our 
literature,  from  the  "  Bay  Psalm  Book"  upward,  a 
pale  reflection  of  better  things  abroad,  unmarked 
by  the  national  characteristics  which  commend 
the  society  and  government  of  America  to  the 
half-reverent  study  of  the  old  world,  perplexed  by 
the  problems  of  the  closing  years  of  the  nineteenth 
century  ? 

Yet  let  us  not  forget,  in  the  first  place,  that  the 
ideas  of  Greek,  Roman,  French,  German,  or  Eng 
lish  individualism  color  but  a  small  part  of  litera 
ture  ;  so  that  no  disproportionate  claim  should  be 
made  upon  American  writers.  In  the  second 

172 


Poets   of  Freedom  and  C^tlture.  1 73 

place,  when  timid  provincialism  gave  way, — and 
never  did  it  sooner  yield  in  a  colony, — the  line  of 
freedom's  light  became  strongly  and  constantly 
apparent  in  Franklin's  state  and  miscellaneous 
papers  ;  in  hundreds  of  speeches,  from  Otis'  and 
Henry's  to  Webster's  and  Lincoln's  ;  in  the  spir 
itual  protests  or  asseverations  of  Channing  and 
Emerson  ;  and  here  and  there  in  the  histories  of 
Bancroft,  Motley,  and  Parkman.  Imaginative  or 
ideal  themes  chosen  by  poet  or  romancer,  though 
less  closely  connected  with  the  liberty-thought, 
demand  free  air  for  their  development;  Haw 
thorne's  democracy  liked  an  aristocratic  back 
ground,  but  it  was  democracy  still,  and  in  its  love 
for  humanity  it  studied  aristocracy  and  feudalism 
from  the  outside.  Cooper  sometimes  carried  pa 
triotism  into  Buncombe  County  ;  Bryant  made  the 
solemn  hills  preach  discreet  political  sermons ; 
Emerson's  "Concord  Hymn 'Ms  bone  and  sinew 
of  the  Saxon  race  in  their  latest  home ;  and  the 
poetry  of  our  .wars,  though  poor  by- absolute 
standards,  is  relatively  not  inferior  to  that  of  other 
lands.  Fortunate  indeed,  and  sufficiently  promi 
nent  in  the  patriotism  of  its  literature,  is  a  country 
that  within  fifty  years  can  produce  such  a  singer 
for  liberty  and  for  home  as  Whittier,  and  can 
proffer,  as  in  Lowell's  verse,  the  hot  fire  of  localism 
and  the  calm  culture  of  deliberate  study. 

The  prime  rhetorical  requisite  is  to  have  some 
thing  to  say  ;  and  so  we  demand  of  the  John  Greenieaf 
would-be  poet  that  he  sing  to  us  a  Whittier> b- 18°7- 
true  song.  Whittier,  in  his  passionate  anti-slavery 


174  American  Literature. 

ballads,  his  lyrics  and  idyls  of  the  plain  New  Eng 
land  home,  and  his  serene  hymns  of  religious 
trust,  sings  from  the  pure  depths  of  a  sincere  soul. 
His  verse  is  diffuse  and  of  irregular  merit ;  from  it 
there  might  be  drawn  an  instructive  glossary  of 
mispronunciations  and  excruciating  rhymes  ;  and 
it  contains  a  large  percentage  of  those  "  occasional " 
poems  which  would  be  a  literary  pest  were  they 
not  so  promptly  and  efficaciously  covered  by  the 
recurrent  tides  of  time.  Yet  Whittier,  without 
being  able  to  avail  himself  of  the  spoils  of  classical 
culture,  and  with  all  the  disadvantages  incident  to 
the  calling  of  the  political  poet,  has  succeeded  by 
the  strength  of  his  conviction, — a  conviction 
affecting,  as  well  as  relying  upon,  the  spontaneous 
grace  of  a  natural  melodist.  Sometimes  his  lame 
muse  of  language  "  goes  halting  along  where  he 
bids  her  go  free  " ;  but  at  other  times  thought  and 
form  unite  in  unstudied  beauty.  Not  one  of  the 
chief  American  poets,  in  the  strictest  use  of  the 
adjective,  Whittier  has  slowly  reached,  in  a  green 
old  age,  a  recognized  fame  which  the  cold  classi 
cist  in  verse,  or  the  restless  sensationalist,  might 
well  envy.  In  fresh  naturalness  of  utterance,  as 
well  as  in  his  rise  from  the  humble  life  of  the 
sturdy  New  England  Quaker  yeomanry,  he  is  in  a 
small  way  the  American  Burns  ;  yet  how  different 
his  serene  and  undisturbed  career — amid  the  glare 
and  hate  of  the  anti-slavery  conflict — from  the  woe 
and  excess  of  the  short  life  of  the  great  Scotch 
lyrist ! 

The  numerous  books  by  Whittier,  the  non-sig- 


Poets  of  Freedom  and  Cultitre.  1 75 

nificant  titles  of  which  do  not  call  for  recapitula 
tion,  have  been  for  the  most  part  small  collections 
of  miscellaneous  poems,  taking  their  names  from 
the  first,  or  longest,  or  most  noteworthy  lyrics  or 
descriptive  pieces.  He  began  to  send  whittier»s 
"  verses "  to  a  local  newspaper,  printed  Books. 
near  his  Massachusetts  birthplace,  when  he  was 
but  seventeen.  The  muse  of  song  beckoned  him 
when  a  farm-lad  or  shoemaker's  helper,  and  she 
still  led  him  forward  at  fourscore  years.  At  the 
district  school  or  the  town  academy  of  Haverhill, 
and  at  the  editor's  desk  in  Haverhill,  Boston, 
Hartford,  Philadelphia,  or  Washington,  his 
thought  and  pen  were  never  long  sundered,  and 
he  produced  an  uninterrupted  series  of  songs  of 
American  country  life ;  bugle  blasts  in  the  van  of 
freedom  ;  or  organ  strains  of  deep  religious  faith 
and  hope.  Whittier,  on  the  whole,  has  lived 
nearer  the  homely  heart  and  life  of  his  northern 
countrymen  than  any  other  American  poet,  save 
Longfellow.  His  reformatory  lyrics  have  been 
saved  from  a  shrill  strident  tone  by  his  refreshing 
habit  of  turning  aside  to  the  simplest  and  most 
peaceful  country  scenes  and  characters ;  and  the 
chief  idyl  of  New  England,  "Snow-Bound," 
resembles  "  The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night"  in  its 
presentation  of  the  soul  as  well  as  the  body  of  the 
people's  life.  With  the  exception  of  "Snow- 
i  Bound,"  the  greater  part  of  his  poetical  product 
\  has  been  exactly  and  constantly  of  the  character 
:  which  attracts,  instructs,  and  benefits  for  the  time, 
but  lacks  the  inherent  elements  of  perennial  great- 


176  American  Literature. 

ness.  Whittier  was  honest  and  wise  when  he 
said  that,  though  not  insensible  to  literary  repu 
tation,  he  set  a  higher  value  on  his  "  name  as 
appended  to  the  anti-slavery  declaration  of  1833 
than  on  the  title  page  of  any  book." 

Behind  all  his  work  appears  the  character  of 
the  man,  which  may  be  called  more  attractive 
The  Character  tnan  tne  work  itself.  Admiration  spon- 
of  the  Man.  taneously  and  often  springs  toward  the 
sweet  pictures  and  pure  pathos  of  his  village 
poems,  the  burning  force  of  his  scornfully  indig 
nant  lyrics  attacking  the  horrors  of  human 
enslavement,  the  story  of  the  honored  patriotism 
of  poor  old  Barbara  Frietchie  during  the  Confed 
erate  invasion  of  Maryland,  the  unfaltering  trust 
of  such  a  religious  utterance  as  "  My  Psalm." 
But  Whittier  as  idyllist,  reformer,  patriot,  or 
preacher  is  less  closely  connected  with  his  readers' 
hearts  than  Whittier  the  man.  Criticism  is  not  yet 
quite  ready  to  eliminate  the  personal  element  from 
its  estimates ;  and  nowhere  else  in  American  song 
does  that  element  come  so  near.  The  personal 
and  subjective  poets  are  usually  those  who  are 
most  fluent  in  descriptions  of  unimportant  char- 
lacteristics  of  their  time  and  place ;  and  so 
Whittier,  like  the  greater  Wordsworth,  burdens 
his  pages  with  much  that  is  trivial  and  inartistic. 
His  subjectivity,  too,  like  Longfellow's,  is  for  the, 
most  part  of  an  obvious  and  readily  intelligible 
kind.  And  yet  shall  the  clearness  and  common- 
jness  of  love  of  home  and  country,  memory  of  the 
dead,  hatred  of  cruelty,  devotion  to  duty  and 


Poets  of  Freedom  and  Culture.  177 

God,  remand  these  sentiments  to  the  lower  order 
of  verse?  Not  so,  thought  Shakespeare.  Whit- 
tier's  art,  imperfect  in  expression,  is  grounded  in 
the  verities  and  eternities ;  his  sentiment  will  live 
when  its  utterance  has  ended  a  temporary  work, 
—and  there  is  as  yet  no  sign  of  death  in  "  Maud 
Muller,"  "  Barbara  Frietchie,"  "  Skipper  Ireson's 
Ride,"  "  In  School-Days,"-"  Laus  Deo,"  or  "Snow- 
Bound."* 

In  Whittier,  as  in  tens  of  thousands  of  the 
world's  brave  soldiers,  love  of  the  country  and 
love  of  country  seem  almost  identical.  His  country. 
The  young  editor  in  various  eastern  heart- 

cities  never  lost  his  constant  and  affectionate 
memories  of  the  lovely  Essex  county  which  gave 
him  birth ;  and  he  carried  into  his  political  work 
the  placid  strength  of  the  Merrimack  in  its 
familiar  meadows  near  the  sea.  Like  Bryant,  \ 
Whittier  has  always  been  a  ruralist  at  heart ;  but, 
more  fortunate  than  Bryant,  he  has  spent  the 
latter  half  of  his  life  amid  the  rustic  scenes  so 
often  portrayed  in  his  verse.  In  the  Revolution 
and  the  civil  war  many  a  soldier,  from  North  or 
South,  spent  in  flame  and  blood  the  strength 
acquired  in  fields  and  woods  ;  and  so  Whittier 
the  reformer  has  ever  been  all  the  mightier  for 
his  country  heart.  His  Friends'  "  inner  light,"  too, 
kept  him  from  the  uncharitable  and  unchristian 
excesses  of  so  many  of  the  Abolitionists,  whose 

*  Mr.  Whittier' s  pleasant  prose  has  already  "passed  into  the  shadow, 
and  calls  for  no  mention  here  ;  nor  does  his  kindly  and  frequent  service  as 
editor  or  preface-writer. 


1 78  American  Liter  at2tre. 

self-wisdom    and     self-righteousness     would     not 
brook  the  slightest  divergence  from  the  individual 
say-so.      Had  Whittier  been  less  loving,  he  would 
have  been  a  mere  dogmatist  and  destructive  ;  had 
he  been  less  stern,  he  would  not  have  been  found 
"  Both  singing  and  striking  in  front  of  the  war 
And  hitting  his  foes  with  the  mallet  of  Thor." 

It  is  not  the  poetry  of  politics,  however  impas 
sioned  or  effective,  upon  which  long  renown  is 
based.  As  the  years  go  by,  we  chiefly  prize 
Transient  and  Whittier's  lyrics  of  anti-slavery  and  war 

permanent.          fQr    what    they    were    rather    than    what 

they  are.  Even  "  Ichabod,"  wherein  Whittier 
thought  he  wrote  the  doom  of  Webster's  fame,  is 
now  read,  if  at  all,  because  of  its  connection  with 
an  orator  who  is  challenging  Burke's  renown  in 
English  prose.  But  when,  in  reform  or  in  battle, 
the  poet  finds  a  theme  which  he  transfigures  with 
the  glory  of  imaginative  genius  or  intellectual 
might,  the  poem  lives,  like  Milton's  sonnet  "  On 
the  Late  Massacre  in  Piemont."  Our  war-verse 
thus  keeps  in  its  choicest  division  Whittier's  noble 
ballad  of  "  Barbara  Frietchie,"  with  its  simple 
grace  and  its  throb  of  the  heart  of  all  humanity. 
Though  we  pass  by  the  "  lines  written  for"  this  or 
that  occasion,  we  treasure  the  stanzas  of  "  The 
Farewell  of  a  Virginia  Slave  Mother  to  her 
Daughters  sold  into  Southern  Bondage,"  for 
their  lyrical  swing  is  as  attractive  as  their  moni 
tory  woe  is  strong : 

Gone,  gone, — sold  and  gone, 

To  the  rice-swamp  dank  and  lone. 


Poets  of  Freedom  and  Culture.  1 79 

Where  the  slave-whip  ceaseless  swings, 
Where  the  noisome  insect  stings, 
Where  the  fever  demon  strews 
Poison  with  the  falling  dews, 
Where  the  sickly  sunbeams  glare 
Through  the  hot  and  misty  air, 

Gone,  gone, — sold  and  gone, 
To  the  rice-swamp  dank  and  lone, 
From  Virginia's  hills  and  waters, 
Woe  is  me,  my  stolen  daughters  ! 

This  lyrical  power  is  often  and  obviously  pres 
ent  in  Whittier — the  power  of  sweetly  singing  a 
thought  of  ideal  truth.  Sometimes  it  is  Lyrical 
manifested  side  by  side  with  some  rugged  P°wer- 
sign  of  haste  in  word  or  rhyme  ;  sometimes  its 
melody  beautifies  an  entire  poem.  None  but  a 
poet  could  frame  such  lines  as 

The  dear  delight  of  doing  good; 
And  pale  remorse  the  ghost  of  sin ; 

Evermore  the  month  of  roses 
Shall  be  sacred  time  to  thee; 

For  thee  thy  sons  shall  nobly  live, 
And  at  thy  need  shall  die  for  thee  ; 

But  life  shall  on  and  upward  go  ; 

Th'  eternal  step  of  progress  beats 
To  that  great  anthem,  calm  and  slow, 
Which  God  repeats. 

Whittier's  readers  readily  admit  that  his  mental 
character  and  chosen  method  of  composition  have 
scattered  rich  thoughts  here  and  there,  without 
striving,  first  of  all,  to  co-ordinate  them  in  artistic 


180  American  Literature. 

unities ;  but  the  pleasure  and  profit  found  in  the 
somewhat  random  product  amply  atone  for  the 
apparently  wayward  defect.  The  "  fatal  fluency  " 
to  which  criticism  has  made  objection  seems  like 
self-sacrifice  on  the  poet's  part  :  he  gives  to 
humanity  the  songs  he  might  have  given  to 
eternal  art.  Warm  love,  in  the  spiritual  world,  is 
better  than  cold  praise  ;  and  when  the  praise  is 
deserved  and  given,  it  is  glowing  and  free.  After 
all,  we  are  what  we  are,  and  each  man,  by  being 
himself,  gets  his  precise  deserts  in  the  world  of 
letters  as  in  the  world  of  life.  Whittier's  lyrics 
remind  us  that  if  we  cannot  always  have  the 
results  of  hand-work  and  soul-work,  we  are  at 
least  spared  the  coldly  technical  success  and  its 
incident  sense  of  spiritual  disappointment.  The 
simple  song,  the  narrow  range — and  Whittier's 
homestead-love,  humanitarianism,  and  piety  are 
really  one — are  those  we  best  love  in  our 
tenderer  moods.  Here,  as  in  so  many  other  in 
stances,  the  poet  has  measured  his  powers  and 
surveyed  his  field,  and  rests  content  with  work 
and  reward.  Said  Whittier,  once  :  "  I  never  had 
any  methods.  When  I  felt  like  it,  I  wrote,  and  I 
had  neither  the  health  nor  patience  to  work  over 
it  afterward.  It  usually  went  as  it  was  originally 
completed."  But  this  spontaneous  song-power  is 
able  at  times  to  produce  such  a  symmetrical 
and  beautiful  result  as  "  The  Pipes  at  Lucknow," 
which  seems  to  me  the  lyrical  masterpiece  of 
Whittier,  and  the  best  of  the  poems  called  forth 


Poets  of  Freedom  and  Culture.  181 

by  the  event  described.  It  is  all  lovely,  but  the 
best  stanzas  for  illustration  are  the  three  which 
follow  : 

O,  they  listened,  looked,  and  waited, 

Till  their  hope  became  despair; 
And  the  sobs  of  low  bewailing 

Filled  the  pauses  of  their  prayer. 
Then  upspake  a  Scottish  maiden, 

With  her  ear  unto  the  ground : 
"Dinna  ye  hear  it? — dinna  ye  hear  it? 

The  pipes  o'  Havelock  sound ! " 

Hushed  the  wounded  man  his  groaning; 

Hushed  the  wife  her  little  ones; 
Alone  they  heard  the  drum-roll 

And  the  roar  of  Sepoy  guns. 
But  to  sounds  of  home  and  childhood 

The  Highland  ear  was  true ; — 
As  her  mother's  cradle-crooning 

The  mountain  pipes  she  knew. 

Like  the  march  of  soundless  music 

Through  the  vision  of  the  seer, 
More  of  feeling  than  of  hearing, 

Of  the  heart  than  of  the  ear, 
She  knew  the  droning  pibroch, 

She  knew  the  Campbell's  call, 
"  Hark  !     hear  ye  no'  MacGregor's, — 

The  grandest  o'  them  all!" 

The  nature  and  exercise  of  Whittier's  powers 
have  been  precisely  those  best  calculated  to  pro 
mote  his  WOrk  as  people's  poet.  A  Nature  and 

strong-souled  man,  trained  in  rural  New  ^hitder^s 
England,  early  given  the  benefit  of  cosmo-  powers, 
politan  work  in  troublous  political  times,  at  length 
permitted  to  return  to  his  favorite  country  scenes, 


1 82  American  Literature. 

and  belonging  by  inheritance  and  conviction  to  a 
religious  body  making  much  of  the  "inner  light" 
of  God  in  the  heart,  Whittier  has  by  his  free  and 
natural  songs  made  freedom  a  duty  and  religion 
a  joy.  His  genius  is  wholly  instinctive  and 
national.  When  peace  followed  the  storms  of 
political  struggle  and  of  civil  war,  he  returned 
naturally  to  the  themes  and  methods  of  nature 
and  the  soul.  Unvexed  by  literary  envy,  and 
oblivious  to  mere  fame,  he  became  the  laureate  of 
the  ocean  beach,  the  inland  lake,  the  little  wood- 
flower,  and  the  divine  sky.  The  strength  and  the 
songs  of  youth  and  middle-age  were  freely  given 
to  humanity,  often  at  the  expense  of  art ;  but  his 
life  has  been  so  spared  that  he  has  produced  dis 
tinctly  literary  work  enough  for  a  more  than 
transient  fame.  The  gold  in  his  verse  is  plenti-  \ 
fully  mixed  with  dross,  but  it  may  readily  be 
found.  It  is  the  gold  of  the  man's  heart,  quickly 
wrought  by  the  facile  artist's  hand.  It  is  but  a 
step  from  the  prose  thought  to  the  poetic  verse : 
thus  the  thought  "  that  the  natural  circumstances  of 
death  cannot  make  any  real  change  of  character ; 
that  no  one  can  be  compelled  to  be  good  or  evil ; 
that  freedom  of  choice  belongs  to  both  worlds, 
and  that  sin  is,  by  its  very  nature,  inseparable 
from  suffering"  sings  itself  in  the  spontaneous 
music  of  such  stanzas  as  this : 

I  know  not  where  his  islands  lift 

Their  frondecl  palms  in  air; 
I  only  know  I  cannot  drift 

Beyond  his  love  and  care. 


Poets  of  Freedom  and  Culture.  183 

Whittier's  merits  are  best  summarized  in  his 
New  England  winter  idyl  "Snow-Bound,"  from 
which  his  customary  defects  are  creditably  absent. 
Upon  this  poem,  as  the  years  go  by,  will  chiefly 
rest  its  maker's  fame.  It  combines 

,1.1  .   <       "Snow-Bound." 

his  descriptive  and  lyrical  powers  with 
his  accustomed  expression  of  the  thoughts  and 
hopes  cf  the  human  heart.  Whittier's  early  suc 
cess  in  poetizing  New  England  legends,  Indian 
and  other,  had  been  very  moderate,  a  fact  which 
the  poet  had  recognized  by  abandoning  many  of 
his  earliest  productions.  Aboriginal  myths  and 
Indian  conflicts  were  to  him,  as  to  many  others, 
tempting  themes  ;  but  he  missed  the  triumph  at 
tained  by  no  more  than  one  of  his  fellow-singers. 
"  Snow-Bound,"  however,  was  an  inspiration  of 
his  own  heart  and  life.  Home  is  as  narrow  as  the 
ancestral  walls,  but  as  broad  as  humanity ;  and 
here  is  a  work  both  local  and  general, — of  the  kind 
which  tends  to  make  the  whole  world  kin.  It  is  a 
little  sphere  seen  through  the  transparent  soul  and 
style  of  the  simple  poet.  Notwithstanding  the 
freshness  of  spring,  the  luxuriance  of  June,  and 
the  sober  wealth  of  autumn,  winter  is  the  most 
characteristic  season  of  that  land  to  which  the 
Pilgrims  came  in  December  ;  and  therefore  "  Snow- 
Bound  "  is  a  fitly  chosen  title  for  Whittier's  char 
acteristic  scenes  and  portraits.  The  muse,  like 
the  man,  after  the  fierce  work  of  abolition,  came 
back  at  last,  and  found  that  "  East,  west,  hame's 
best."  Having  strongly  helped  to  shape  the 
political  history  and  social  life  of  the  nation, 


184  American  Literature. 

Whittier  turned  to  sing  of  one  of  its  typical  hearth 
stones.  Here  were  needed  no  fruit  of  foreign 
culture,  no  high  search  for  the  ideal,  no  philo 
sophic  didacticism  ;  the  home-bred  singer,  like  so 
many  of  his  predecessors,  framed  the  simple  chant 
of  that  which  he  best  knew.  The  wasteful  irregu 
larity  and  hurried  excess  which  have  diminished 
or  destroyed  the  value  of  so  much  of  Whittier's 
writing — and  so  much  of  American  literature — 
here  give  place  to  the  simplicity  of  artless  art, 
lightly  touched  and  slightly  transfigured  by  gleams 
of  that  ideal  excellence  toward  which  life  and  its 
reflecting  literature  aspire. 

Little  by  little,  during  the  decades  since  the 
publication  of  "  Snow-Bound,"  it  has  become 
almost  axiomatic  in  America  to  say  that  the  poem 
deserves  mention  with  "The  Deserted  Village"- 
and  "The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night."  Perhaps 
this  verdict,  though  common,  is  too  hurriedly  con 
fident  ;  but  it  is  certain  that  the  qualities  of  the 
poem  are  the  same  as  those  which  have  given 
lasting  renown  to  its  famous  forerunners  ;  and 
that  it  shows  "  no  sign  of  age,  no  fear  to  die." 
In  its  native  character  and  indigenous  worth  its 
nearest  rival  is  "  The  Biglow  Papers  "  ;  and  "  The 
Biglow  Papers,"  written  in  dialect,  during  twenty 
years,  cannot  be  considered  a  unity.  Sometimes 
homely  pathos  and  kindly  humor  combine  with 
facile  art  to  produce,  as  here,  a  rounded  literary 
result.  We  see  and  learn  to  know  and  love  this 
plain  country  home,  with  its  honest  faces  illu 
mined  by  the  great  fire  of  an  "  old-fashioned 


Poets  of  Freedom  and  Culture.  185 

\ 

winter,"  and  with  its  surrounding  and  imprisoning 
glory  of  the  ample  northern  snow.  And  from  it 
all  there  rises  the  world-hymn : 

What  matter  how  the  night  behaved? 

What  matter  how  the  north-wind  raved  ? 

Blow  high,  blow  low,  not  all  its  snow 

Could  quench  our  hearth-fire's  ruddy  glow. 

O  Time  and  Change ! — with  hair  as  gray 

As  was  my  sire's  that  winter  day, 

How  strange  it  seems,  with  so  much  gone 

Of  life  and  love,  to  still  live  on ! 

Ah,  brother  !  only  I  and  thou 

Are  left  of  all  that  circle  now, — • 

The  dear  home  faces  whereupon 

That  fitful  firelight  paled  and  shone. 

Henceforward,  listen  as  we  will, 

The  voices  of  that  hearth  are  still  ; 

Look  where  we  may,  the  wide  earth  o'er, 

Those  lighted  faces  smile  no  more. 

We  tread  the  paths  their  feet  have  worn, 
We  sit  beneath  their  orchard-trees, 
We  hear,  like  them,  the  hum  of  bees 

And  rustle  of  the  bladed  corn; 

We  turn  the  pages  that  they  read, 

Their  written  words  we  linger  o'er, 

»But  in  the  sun  they  cast  no  shade, 
No  voice  is  heard,  no  sign  is  made, 

No  step  is  on  the  conscious  floor ! 
Yet  love  will  dream,  and  faith  will  trust 
(Since  he  who  knows  our  need  is  just), 
That  somehow,  somewhere,  meet  we  must. 
Alas  for  him  who  never  sees 
The  stars  shine  through  his  cypress-trees  ! 
Who,  hopeless,  lays  his  dead  away, 
Nor  looks  to  see  the  breaking  day 
Across  the  mournful  marbles  play  ! 


1 86  American  Literature. 

Who  hath  not  learned,  in  hours  of  faith, 
The  truth  to  flesh  and  sense  unknown, 

That  Life  is  ever  lord  of  Death, 

And  L,ove  can  never  lose  its  own  ! 

There  is  naught  of  unkindness  or  injustice  in 
saying  that  Whittier  as  poet  is  not  great  but 
good,  in  every  sense  of  the  adjective.*  Who 
would  not  be  satisfied  with  such  a  life  work  in 
letters,  self-crowned  at  nigh  four-score  years  by  a 
book  so  true  as  "  Saint  Gregory's  Guest,  and 
Other  Poems  ? "  Of  the  poet  himself  might  be 
spoken  the  words  he  therein  sang  of  a  dead  New 
England  painter  : 

Magician,  who  from  commonest  elements 
Called  up  divine  ideals,  clothed  upon 
By  mystic  lights,  soft  blending  into  one 

Womanly  grace  and  child-like  innocence. 

Teacher !  thy  lesson  was  not  given  in  vain. 
Beauty  is  goodness  ;  ugliness  is  sin  ; 
Art's  place  is  sacred  :  nothing  foul  therein 

May  crawl  or  tread  with  bestial  feet  profane. 

There  is  an  interesting  contrast  between  the 
lives  of  the  two  principal  poets  of  anti-slavery 
Whittier  m  America.  Whittier  was  born  in  a 
and  Lowell,  county  town,  of  Quaker  parentage ; 
obtained  a  meagre  English  education  by  his  own 
efforts  ;  served  here  and  there  in  the  humdrum 
toils  of  the  editor ;  and  at  length  permanently 
retired  to  the  Arcadian  simplicity  of  rural  quiet. 

*  "  If  men  will  impartially,  and  not  asquint,  look  toward  the  offices  and 
function  of  a  poet,  they  will  easily  conclude  to  themselves  the  impossibility 
of  any  man's  being  the  good  poet,  without  first  being  a  good  man." — Ben 
Jonson,  dedication  of  "  Volpone  ;  or,  The  Fox." 


Poets  of  Freedom  and  Culture.  187 

Lowell  was  born  in  a  Boston  suburb ;  his  father 
was  minister  of  a  prominent  city  church  ;  his 
education  was  in  the  oldest  American  college,  the 
somewhat  slender  resources  of  which — even  in  its 
Augustan  literary  period — he  supplemented  in 
the  cultured  circles  of  eastern  Massachusetts  ;  in 
mature  youth  he  took  his  seat  in  the  Harvard 
chair  of  modern  languages,  as  Longfellow's 
successor ;  thenceforward,  for  many  years,  he 
lived  a  literary  life  quite  closely  corresponding  to 
that  of  old-world  centres  of  authorship  ;  and  at 
length,  in  Madrid  and  London,  he  represented 
the  United  States  in  ancient  and  important 
courts.  But  Lowell,  the  representative  of  culture 
and  of  what  has  been  called  the  "  Brahmin  caste 
of  Boston,"  will  chiefly  be  remembered  as  poet 
because  of  his  New  England  heart  and  voice — 
his  idyls  of  the  Junes  and  Decembers  of  Massa 
chusetts,  and  his  verse  of  anti-slavery  and  patriot 
ism,  beginning  with  the  fierce  blasts  against  the 
pro-slavery  Mexican  war  of  1848,  and  ending 
with  the  serene  fervor  of  the  Harvard  Commem 
oration  Ode  of  1865.  With  more  humor  and 
romantic  sentiment,  Lowell  resembles  Whittier  in 
his  two  chief  lines  of  poetic  work  and  success. 
To  the  thought  of  freedom,  rural  and  national, 
have  been  added  some  of  the  spoils  of  time,  but 
the  general  theme  and  temper  are  unchanged. 

There  was  not  much  in  a  large  part  of  Lowell' 
early  verse  to  promise  that  he  would  be  a  charac 
teristic  American   humorist,   satirist,    idyllist,   and 
critic.     It    was    simply    the  lyrical    product  of   a 


1 88  American  Literature. 

young  man  of  sentiment,  and  sometimes  of  senti- 
Loweii's  mentality.  To  write  a  "  Serenade,  "  lines 

Early  Poems.   sent  ,<  y^fa  a  preSSed  Flower,"  "  SOngS  " 

and  "stanzas"  on  this  or  that,  addresses  "To  the 
Past"  and  "  To  the  Future,"  "incidents"  of  one 
sort  or  another,  and  miscellaneous  personalities 
"to,"  or  moral  reflections  "on," — all  these  were 
marks  of  an  age  the  spirit  of  which  was  felt  by 
Longfellow,  Whittier,  and  all.  Irene,  Allegra, 
Hebe,  and  Perdita  are  the  ladies  who  figure  prom 
inently  in  such  juvenilia  as  these,  which  must  dis 
tress  the  calm  soul  of  the  mature  re-reader.  The 
moon  and  the  sea,  of  course,  were  sometimes  able 
to  express  the  conditions  and  longings  of  the 
poet's  soul,  which,  however,  was  occasionally 
forced  to  utter  itself  in  a  grand  combination  of 
the  methods  of  the  early  Tennysonian  lyric  and 
of  the  novels  of  the  junior  Cobb  : 

I  waited  with  a  maddened  grin 

To  hear  that  voice  all  icy  thin 

Slide  forth  and  tell  my  deadly  sin 

To  hell  and  heaven,  Rosaline  ! 

But  no  voice  came,  and  then  it  seemed, 

That  if  the  very  corpse  had  screamed, 

The  sound  like  sunshine  glad  had  streamed 

Through  that  dark  stillness,  Rosaline ! 

And  then,  amid  the  silent  night, 

I  screamed  with  horrible  delight, 

And  in  my  brain  an  awful  light 

Did  seem  to  crackle,  Rosaline  ! 

It  is  my  curse  !  sweet  memories  fall 

From  me  like  snow, — and  only  all 

Of  that  one  night,  like  cold  worms  crawl 

My  doomed  heart  over,  Rosaline ! 


Poets  of  Freedom  and  Culture.  189 

The  poet,   like  the  fat  boy  in  "  Pickwick,"    evi 
dently  "  wants  to  make  your  flesh  creep." 

But  it  is   far   easier  to   criticise   the  old   senti 
mental  revival  of  American  letters,  than  it  was  to 
resist  its  influence  at  the  time.     Irving  had  paved 
the    way  ;     and     an     emancipated     nationalism,  = 
affected  by  novel  religious  and  social  reforms,  and 
stirred  by  a  fresh  sense  of  power,  naturally  turned 
our  young  writers  toward  extravagance  and  artifi 
ciality.      England  herself  was   sharing  the  same 
feeling,    which,     indeed,     had     already     affected 
France  and  Germany,  where  Goethe  had  many  a 
time   crossed  the  line  separating    bombast   from 
power.     There  was  in  young  Lowell,  after  all,  an 
evident,   though   by   no   means   regular,   thought- 
strength  and  word-strength  ;  his  best    ideas  were 
true ;  of  the  imaginative  quality  of  his  mind  there 
could  be  no  question  ;  and  in  his  earliest  books  he 
promptly  struck  some  notes  of  originality.     Matu 
rity  and  good  judgment  are  precisely  the  qualities 
which  marked  Lowell's  brilliant  literary  review  in 
verse,   "  A  Fable  for  Critics,"  described  at  some 
length    in   a  preceding   chapter    of    the      « A  Fable 
present   history.       A    young    man   who    forCntlcs-" 
could  characterize  a  literature,  scarcely  older  than 
himself,  with  the  insight    and  the  prophetic  wis 
dom  which  Lowell  displayed  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
nine,  was  assuredly  in  no  danger  of  being  perma 
nently  bound  by  the  iron  fetters  of  custom  or  the 
flowery  garlands  of  a  fleeting  fashion. 

As  we  re-read   Lowell's   early  verse,  good  and 
bad,  in  many  strains,  we  recognize  the  courage  of 


American  Literature. 

the  poet  in  retaining  so  much  of  it.  The  mind  of 
the  imaginative  genius  cannot  be  restricted  to  any 
narrow  range  of  thought  or  song.  In  later  years 
Lowell  has  been  a  conservative,  in  his  publication 
of  none  but  his  best  ;  the  same  principle  was 
doubtless  his  guide  in  youth,  but  his  early  best 
was  irregular.  The  poetic  product  has  varied 
greatly  in  value,  but  it  has  almost  always  seemed 
sincere.  When,  as  in  the  absurd  poem  from 
which  stanzas  have  been  cited,  Lowell  yielded  to 
a  notion,  he  at  least  yielded  himself  without 
reserve.  The  singer  who  was  willing  to  sacrifice 
so  much  for  the  sake  of  anti-slavery  and  unpopu 
lar  religious  movements,  and  to  write  a  whole 
series  of  poems,  with  his  utmost  force,  against  a 
popular  war,  is  certainly  not  amenable  to  the 
charge  of  weakness.  The  lack  of  Addisonian 
Manly  care  m  tne  preparation  of  his  prose  is  par- 
Sincerity.  aneieci  by  a  certain  lavishness  in  the  pro 
duction  of  his  verse  ;  but  on  the  whole  Lowell 
was  more  likely  to  be  endangered  by  conserva- 
tism  than  by  spontaneity.  We  pardon  the  occa 
sional  silly  jingles  and  the  bathos  in  his  first 
books,  for  the  sake  of  their  idyllic  promise,  their 
romantic  and  poetic  feeling,  and  their  strong 
creative  originality  in  some  fields.  The  worst 
fault  in  his  volumes  of  verse  produced  before 
middle  life  is,  after  all,  that  of  prolixity ;  the 
greatest  merit,  of  course,  is  the  conspicuous  pres 
ence  of  the  poetic  gift. 

The  human   element   in    Lowell,  when  it  finds 
expression    in   verses    of   life,    is    far   from    Poe's 


Poets   of  Freedom  and  Culture.  191 

bloodless  passionateness,  though  it  hardly  beats 
with  the  warm  heart  of  Longfellow. 

, .    .       1  .  '  Humanity. 

Lowells  non-political  and  non-humorous 
verse    is    usually  that    of   tender  thoughtfulness. 
There  is  a  place  in  our  song  for  his  "  A  Requiem  " 
as  well  as  for  "Annabel  Lee"  or  "  Resignation"  : 

Now  I  can  love  thee  truly, 

For  nothing  comes  between 
The  senses  and  the  spirit, 

The  seen  and  the  unseen ; 
Lifts  the  eternal  shadow, 

The  silence  bursts  apart, 
And  the  soul's  boundless  future 

Is  present  in  my  heart. 

The  grave  reflectiveness  of  the  scholar  but  serves 
to  heighten  the  simple  grief  and  the  earnest  hope 
of  the  man.  Later  he  wrote,  in  a  poem  free  from 
every  fault  of  his  earlier  work  : 

Not  all  the  preaching  since  Adam 
Has  made  Death  other  than  Death. 

but  yet  in  this  darkest  doubt,  he  exclaimed  : 

Immortal?  I  feel  it  and  know  it, 
Who  doubts  it  of  such  as  she? 

The  conflicting  moods  of  this  mature  poem, 
"  After  the  Burial,"  often  appear  in  the  earlier 
verse.  Lowell  is  a  poet  of  the  eternal  mystery 
of  life  and  death  ;  and  his  answers  are  neither 
those  of  hasty  faith  nor  those  of  long  despair.  In 
reply  to  the  questions  of  the  open  grave  his  best 
lyrics  are  sung : 


192  American  Literature. 

As  a  twig  trembles,  which  a  bird 

Lights  on  to  sing,  then  leaves  unbent, 

So  is  my  memory  thrilled  and  stirred; — 
I  only  know  she  came  and  went.* 

I  know  not  how  others  saw  her, 

But  to  me  she  was  wholly  fair, 
And  the  light  of  the  heaven  she  came  from 

Still  lingered  and  gleamed  in  her  hair ; 
For  it  was  wavy  and  golden, 

And  as  many  changes  took 
As  the  shadows  of  sun-gilt  ripples 

On  the  yellow  bed  of  a  brook. f 

Even  in  his  poems  of  the  heart,  Lowell's  poetic 

fancy   made   him   too    lavish    in    illustration    and 

epithet.     A  discreeter  bard  would  have 

Lavishness.  .         ,     ..       -  ,  , 

restricted  his  figurative  language,  and 
won  greater  fame.  His  facility  and  fertility 
pleased  the  few  and  repelled  the  many.  Lowell's 

O'er  yon  bare  knoll  the  pointed  cedar  shadows 
Drowse  on  the  crisp,  gray  moss;  the  ploughman's  call 

Creeps   faint   as   smoke   from   black,   fresh-furrowed   mead 
ows  ; 
The  single  crow  a  single  caw  lets  fall ; 

And  all  around  me  every  bush  and  tree 

Says  Autumn's  here,  and  Winter  soon  will  be, 
Who  snows  his  soft,  white  sleep  and  silence  over  all 

is   poetical,    but   it   delights    no    more    than    one 
reader  of  the  ten  who  take  pleasure  in  Bryant's 

The  melancholy  days  are  come,  the  saddest  of  the  year, 
Of   wailing   winds,    and   naked   woods,    and   meadows   brown 
and  sere. 

*  "  She  Came  and  Went."  t  "  The  Changeling." 


Poets  of  Freedom  and  Culture.  193 

Few  indeed  are  the  poets  of  nature  or  the  heart 
who  can  make  obvious  the  ideal  and  universal. 
Lowell  attempts  to  give  us  too  much  ;  the  forty 
long  stanzas  of  "  An  Indian  Summer  Reverie," 
full  of  apt  allusions,  we  gladly  exchange  for  the 
few  well-known  June-lines  of  "  The  Vision  of  Sir 
Launfal."  Seldom  indeed,  can  a  singer  succeed 
by  the  very  opulence  of  suggestiveness,  as  in 
Shelley's  "  Cloud,"  which  is  itself  dangerously 
near  such  repetition  or  confusion  as  one  notes  in 
Lowell's  "  To  a  Pine-Tree,"  which  just  escapes 
grandeur,  but  escapes  it  utterly. 

Few  readers  know  what  deep  and  rich  philos 
ophy,  what  fruits  of  thought  and  culture,  are 
to  be  found  in  some  of  Lowell's  work :  philosophic 
for  instance,  in  "  Columbus,"  "  Beaver  Thousht- 
Brook,"  "On  a  Portrait  of  Dante  by  Giotto," 
c<  Stanzas  on  Freedom,"  "  The  Ghost-Seer,"  "  Pro 
metheus,"  and  a  dozen  others  as  good.  If  our 
literature  shall  ever  fade  and  die  in  the  coming 
centuries,  and  some  future  reader  shall  stumble 
upon  Lowell's  books,  he  will  easily  and  excusably 
wax  highly  enthusiastic  over  the  unquestionable 
wealth  of  thought  therein  discovered.  As  he 
founds  a  new  cult,  he  may  confidently  exclaim,  in 
Lowell's  own  language : 

Great  truths  are  portions  of  the  soul  of  man; 
Great  souls  are  portions  of  eternity. 

And  yet  there  is  a  sad  possibility  that  he  will  at 

13 


194  American  Literature. 

length    see    the    blemish   of   too    many    of   these 
poems,    the    blemish    already    mentioned 

Verbosity,     f  111  ,  „ 

here,  and  expressed  by  that  most  coldly 
satirical  of  criticisms  :   "  Words,  words,  words."    _- 

There  is  no  use  in  denying  or  minimizing  this 
fact,  to  which  must  be  added  the  equally  appar 
ent  fault  of  careless  expression  on  Lowell's  part."" 
Not  often,  in  the  history  of  poetry,  does  one  find 
a  poetical  product  at  once  so  genuinely  valuable 
and  so  annoy ingly  irregular.  It  is  easy,  of 
course,  to  name  a  dozen  poets  who  have  written 
too  much  or  too  hastily — who  is  exempt  from  one 
or  the  other  fault  ?  But  in  Lowell's  verse  there  is 
a  peculiar  and  an  aggravating  variety  of  impulsive 
ideas  and  swift  expressions.  Force  and  fire  are 
secured  on  the  one  hand,  at  the  expense,  perhaps, 
of  the  consistency  of  art.  An  artist  may  fail,  like 
Tennyson  in  his  dramas  ;  but  at  least  Tennyson 
does  his  best, — the  failure  is  likely  to  be  inherent 
in  the  singer  or  his  theme.  There  is  in  Tenny 
son,  now  and  then,  a  misapprehension,  perhaps 
grotesquely  complete,  a  fall,  perhaps  pitiful ;  but 
it  is  not  one  of  carelessness  or  hurry.  A  close 
study  and  minute  analysis  of  Lowell's  language, 
whether  in  prose  or  verse,  brings  promptly  to 
view  an  array  of  errors  which  cannot  be  paralleled 
in  the  works  of  Emerson,  Bryant,  Longfellow,  or 
Hawthorne,  his  fellow-workers  and  contempo 
raries.  A  scholar  of  thorough  culture  in  more 
than  one  field,  he  vexes  the  refined  sense  as  truly 
as  Whitman  and  more  often  than  Whittier. 

But  James  Russell  Lowell  is  a  wit  and  a  gen-i 


Poets  of  Freedom  and  Culture.  195 

ius  :  wit  sparkles  through  whole  essays  and  long 
poems,  and  in  the  best  parts  of  "  A  Fable  for 
Critics  "  or  "  The  Biglow  Papers  "  it  fairly  proves 
that  it  is  genius.  Who  would  exchange  such 
results,  so  brilliant  and  so  illuminating,  for  a  ten 
fold  number  of  machine-essays  or  Odes  to  Pro 
priety  ?  The  very  faults  are  human  and  helpful. 
Lowell  is  a  poet  of  freedom,  of  nature,  poemsofFree- 
and  of  human  nature.  His  intellectual  d°nmd'  ^mraen 
freaks  and  sallies  are  those  of  a  patriot  Nature. 

and  reformer,  a-  man  whose  spontaneity  is  better 
than  his  imitativeness  or  his  deliberateness.  The 
qualities  of  such  great  books  as  "  The  Vicar  of 
Wakefield  "  or  "  Gil  Bias  "  —irregular  pictures  of 
an  irregular  world — are  those  which  now  and  then 
reappear  in  the  pages  of  this  Yankee  idyllist,  foe 
of  slavery  and  of  war,  and  lover  of  special  Ameri 
can  humanity  seen  against  the  background  of  the 
old-world's  centuries.  We  could  not  have  had  the 
"  Commemoration  Ode,"  or  "  The  Courtin',"  or 
even  "  The  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal,"  from  a  man 
without  a  human  heart  and  brain.  And  time,  in 
his  case,  will  once  more  carry  forward  the  slow 
and  unerring  process  of  saving  from  the  mass 
the  select  literary  "  remnant "  of  the  lastingly 
valuable. 

In  a  previous  chapter  and  volume  of  this  his 
tory  I  have  already  noted  the  injurious  effect  of 
the  varied  and  elementary  demands  of  American 
life  upon  our  scientists,  to  the  injury  varied 

of  what  ought  to  have  been  their  large     demands  of 

,  .     .       , ,  111  .  American  life. 

and    originally  valuable    creative    work. 


American  Literature. 

IvsKall  have  occasion  hereafter  to  study  the  influ 
ence  of  the  same   multifarious   industry  or  prodi 
gality  upon  recent  fiction.     Its  mark  is  plain,  also, 
ipon    the    work    of   Whittier   and    Lowell.     But 
:haracter  is  a  higher  thing  than  art,  after  all  ;  and 
:here  is  character  in  these  two  men,  and  in  nearly 
ill  of  their  books.     Lowell  the  editor,  abolitionist, 
•eligious  liberal,  critic,  diplomat,  is  also  the  writer 
>f  that  noble  allegory  of  good  deeds,  "  The  Vis 
ion  of  Sir  Launfal,"  with   its  lofty  lesson  and  its 
"The  vision  of   warm  glow  of  idyllic  sunshine.     All  at 
Sir  Launfal."      once,  forty  years  ago,  his   rich    mind 
could  give   the  world    an  intellectual   and    moral 
store    so  varied  as  that  of  this    evenly-presented 
"  Vision  "  ;  the  stern   political  warning  of    "  The 
Present     Crisis "  ;     the    pungent    satire — though 
sometimes  coarsely  written    for   quick    effect — of 
the  first  series  of  "  The  Biglow  Papers,"  in  which 
he  taught  his  readers  to  love  the  New  England 
"The Biglow   fields,  and  to  hate  the  pro-slavery  Mexi- 
Papers."          can  war .    ancj  t^e  swift  survey  of  our 

nascent  literature  proffered  in  the  unsurpassed 
"  Fable  for  Critics."  Work  at  once  so  rapid  and 
so  good  never  came,  within  so  brief  a  period,  from 
an  American  pen.  With  all  .Whittier's  love  of 
New  England  soil  and  men,  and  all  his  hate  of 
oppression  and  political  truckling,  Lowell  also 
displayed  wit  and  humor  that  sent  his  shafts 
straight  home,  but,  unfortunately,  made  thousands 
of  careless  readers  believe  him  a  mere  jester  or  at 
best  a  vitriolic  satirist,  as  in  "  What  Mr.  Robinson 
Thinks,"  a  poem  upon  which  its  unfortunate 


Poets  of  Freedom  and  Culture.  197 

subject's  reputation  chiefly  rests.  "  The  Biglow 
Papers"  in  their  two  series  (1848-1867)  are  not 
only  satire  and  idyllic  picture,  but  also  a  valuable 
philological  contribution,  with  their  careful  dis 
play  of  the  Yankee  dialectic  pronunciation  and 
phraseology. 

No  other  American  poet  has  succeeded  so  con- 
stantly,  and  with  such  strong  indication  of  high 
powers  of  observation  and  delineation  of  Yankee 
character,  in  portrayal  of  the  New  Delineation 
England  men  as  they  are.  Take  the  of  Yankee 

0  character. 

excellent  pictures  in  '  Fitz-Adam  s 
Story,"  the  only  printed  part  of  a  never-fulfilled 
plan  for  a  group-poem  to  be  entitled  "  The  Noon 
ing,"  and  to  be  composed  of  serious  or  humorous 
tales  in  verse.  The  chief  of  these  pictures  is  a 
personification  of  Yankee  stinginess  in  a  hypo- 
critic  garb — a  type  sadly  familiar.  In  other 
pictures,  however,  and  very  often,  Lowell  fully 
and  aptly  and  most  justly  sets  before  us  the  rustic 
folk-mind  in  its  strength,  shrewdness,  helpful 
kindness,  and  simple  reliance  on  God  and  self. 
The  characteristics  which  reached  their  utmost 
manifestation  in  the  face  of  Emerson  will  not  be 
lost  to  literature  so  long  as  Lowell's  poetical 
works  continue  to  be  read.  In  this  regard  the 
poet  was  born  in  the  right  place  at  the  right  time. 
Lowell's  heart-words,  when  uttered  against 
slavery  or  political  war,  or  in  delineation  of  rural 
life  or  natural  beauty,  have  been  heard  with  some 
thing  like  the  general  welcome  accorded  to  his 
rollicking  productions  in  the  vein  of  wit  or 


198  American  Literature. 

humor.  As  a  sentimentalist,  however,  his  public  | 
has  been  more  limited  than  Longfellow's  or 
Whittier's.  From  his  verse  of  sentiment  or 
imagination  or  more  frequent  fancy  one  can 
select  a  goodly  list  of  meritorious  poems,  but  most 
of  them  are  not  widely  known.  They  are  not 
indispensable,  as  the  best  poetry  must  always  be, 
and  as  his  "  Auf  Wiedersehen,"  "  Das  Ewig- 
Weibliche,"  "  The  Changeling,"  "The  First 
Snow-Fail,"  "  The  Courtin',  "  "  After  the  Burial," 
Lowell's  "  The  Miner,"  and  "  Ode  Recited  at  the 
best  lyrics.  Harvard  Commemoration"  seem  to  be. 
Most  of  us  would  be  content  to  have  written 
these  eight  alone,  or  even  the  last,  the  best 
American  poem  of  occasion,  and  the  chief  literary 
result  of  the  civil  war.  Such  songs,  lovely  or 
noble,  outweigh  the  store  of  thought  in  "  The 
Cathedral,"  or  the  richly  varied  nature-panorama 
in  the  second  series  of  "  The  Biglow  Papers," 
quaintly  and  modestly  entitled  "  Sunthin'  in  the 
Pastoral  Line." 

Notwithstanding  his  high  success  in  the  "  Com-\ 
memoration  Ode,"  Lowell  has  not  always  shown 
the  confident  powers  which  the  ode-maker  must 
possess.  The  ambitious  ode  on  Agassiz  is  valu 
able  for  its  portraits  of  the  subject  and  his 
friends,  but  the  metrical  system  seems  over- 
cumbrous  ;  where  success  is  won  it  is  in  spite  of 
the  system,  not  because  of  it.  Lowell  is  usually 
Man  and  strongest  where  he  is  freest,  as  in  the 
felicitous  personal  "  Epistle  to  George 
William  Curtis."  In  the  sonnet,  however,  he  is 


Poets  of  Freedom  and  Citlture.  igg 

not  fettered  by  a  form  that  too  severely  binds 
some  others  ;  but  he  finds  within  its  "  narrow 
room "  ample  chance  to  express  political  admira 
tion  or  scorn,  or  to  make  such  tender  tributes  as 
are  offered  in  the  "  Bankside  "  series  to  the  mem 
ory  of  Edmund  Quincy,  one  of  the  true  gentle 
men  in  American  thought  and  letters.  Despite 
his  extensive  readings  and  studies  in  English  and 
continental  poetry,  the  personality  of  Lowell  , 
dominates  that  which  he  writes  ;  we  are  almost 
always  conscious  of  the  man  and  his  mind  ;  no 
artistic  result  eliminates  him  and  leaves  us  only 
the  work. 

Mr.  Lowell's  productions,  from  first  to  last, 
both  in  verse  and  in  prose,  have  occasionally  been 
subjected  to  severe  or  violent  critical  The  secret  of 
condemnation.  Even  the  "  Commemo-  Lo^i^JS 
ration  Ode"  has  been  most  contempt-  Failures. 
uously  characterized  by  an  able  but  eccentric 
English  poet  and  scholar  whose  vocabulary  con 
tains  no  adjectives  midway  between  "heavenly" 
and  "  devilish."  We  have  been  told,  by  various 
writers,  of  his  mixed  metaphors  ;  culinary  com 
parisons  ;  inconsistencies  of  utterance  ;  willing 
ness  to  introduce  coarse  jokes  more  akin  to  the 
wild  western  " humorist"  than  the  Cambridge 
scholar ;  and  use  of  forced  rhymes  worthy  of  a 
country  bardling  or  the  intensest  modern  medise- 
valist.  These  faults,  which  must  at  times  be 
recognized  and  plainly  described,  really  spring 
from  the  very  qualities  of  alertness  and  freshness 
of  speech  which  make  Lowell  the  poet  both  of 


2OO  American  Literature. 

scholars  and  of  a  part,  at  least,  of  the  common 
people.  It  is  hard  to  distinguish,  sometimes, 
between  a  "  more  than  Shakespearean  felicity " 
and  a  dangerous  carelessness,  individuality,  or 
obscurity.  Lowell  approaches  all  these  things  ; 
and  for  this  very  reason  few  of  his  critics  agree 
in  their  lists  of  his  best  and  worst  productions. 
He  writes,  furthermore,  for  his  own  time  ;  a  more  ~ 
A  Poet  of  selfish  or  discreet  bard — a  Bowles  or  a 
the  time.  ROgers — would  have  left  us  a  trim  little 
book  of  metrical  reflections,  without  the  lyrical 
grace,  and  without  those  faults  which  poor  N.  P. 
Willis  very  aptly  called  "  hurrygraphs."  But  I, 
for  one,  am  willing  to  give  up  neither  the  quick 
sparkle  nor  the  lasting  worth,  neither  such  dialect 
wit  nor  such  a  scholarly  introduction  as  may  be 
found  in  the  second  Biglow  series.  It  might  be 
better  to  separate  the  'prentice-work  and  time- 
work  from  the  results  of  art,  long  and  true ; 
Lowell  has  not  separated  them,  but  neither  did 
Wordsworth,  nor  Shakespeare  himself,  whose  art 
was  sometimes  worse  than  his  hack  writing  for 
the  expectant  play-house.  Lowell,  more  than 
calm  Emerson,  gentle  Longfellow,  blatant,  bus 
tling  Whitman,  cold  Bryant,  or  unhuman  Poe, 
writes  at  once  as  man  and  scholar,  wit  and  artist, 
reformer  and  poetic  maker.  Therefore  Whittier 

and     Lowell    reap    the    American    reward,  .while . 

they  lose  some  sprays  of  the  Greek  laurel}  Of 
either  of  them  might  be  said,  as  Lowell  wrote 
of  Abraham  Lincoln  : 


Poets  of  Freedom  and  Culture.  201 

His  was  no  lonely  mountain-peak  of  mind, 

Thrusting  to  thin  air  o'er  our  cloudy  bars, 

A  sea-mark  now,  now  lost  in  vapors  blind; 

Broad  prairie  rather,  genial,  level-lined, 

Fruitful  and  friendly  for  all  human  kind, 

Yet  also  nigh  to  heaven  and  loved  of  loftiest  stars. 

The  time  will  come,  I  presume,  when  two  hun 
dred  million  English-reading  people  will  occupy  the 
present  territory  of  the  United  States.  Litera 
ture  does  not  necessarily  grow  with  numbers  or 
wealth — the  greatest  glory  of  the  greatest  of  the 
world's  literatures  is  still  the  Elizabethan  English J 
We  shall  then,  however,  have  ample  The  Amer. 
leisure  for  a  serener  art.  In  the  teeming  icanSons- 
years  of  the  future,  American  authors  will  hardly 
be  forced,  or  tempted  by  their  ready  zeal,  into 
works  so  multifarious  as  those  of  Lowell  in  these 
early  and  shaping  days  of  American  letters.  A 
booklet  designed  to  aid  in  a  thorough  study  of  his 
writings  discusses  them  under  the  several  heads 
of  nature  ;  the  poetic  ideal ;  a  "portrait  gallery" 
of  thirty  or  forty  authors  delineated  in  his  verse  ; 
legends,  history  and  religion.  In  the  historical 
division  the  claim  is  made,  and  justly,  that, 
"  Lowell's  patriotic  verse  lights  every  part  of  our 
national  chronicle ;  there  are  poems  about  the 
discoverers,  the  forefathers,  the  men  of  '76,  the 
nation  from  1787  to  1820,  the  rise  of  abolitionism, 
the  annexation  of  Texas  and  the  Mexican  War, 
the  'Irrepressible  Conflict,'  the  Commemoration 
Ode,  the  reconstruction."  Such  a  range  of  sub 
jects  would  be  impossible  for  some  poets,  and 


2O2^  American  Literature. 


^_ 


dangerous  to  all ;  but  Lowell  bears  the  test  with 
substantial  success, — a  success  somewhat  more 
lasting  than  the  swift  and  earnest  singer  expected 
in  youth.  "  Unless  to  thought  is  added  will," 
says  Emerson,  "  Apollo  is  an  imbecile";  this 
Cambridge  Apollo  adds  will  to  thought,  and  pro 
duces  a  result  distinctly  American,  and  often  dis 
tinctly  poetic.  His  full  mind  and  ready  pen  turn 
without  hesitation  from  the  practical  to  the  ideal ; 
now  they  pack  into  four  lines  a  somewhat  strenu 
ous  argument  for  international  copyright : — 

In  vain  we  call  old  notions  fudge, 

And  bend  our  conscience  to  our  dealing, 

The  Ten  Commandments  will  not  budge, 
And  stealing  will  continue  stealing, — 

and  now  he  peers  toward  the  ultimate  home  of 
poetry  and  religion,  Shelley's  "  land  where  music 
and  moonlight  and  feeling  are  one,"  of  which 
Lowell  sings  : 

Happier  to  chase  a  flying  goal 
Than  to  sit  counting  laurelled  gains, 

To  guess  the  soul  within  the  soul 
Than  to  be  lord  of  what  remains. 

Hide  still,  best  good,  in  subtile  wise, 
Beyond  my  nature's  utmost  scope; 

Be  ever  absent  from  mine  eyes 
To  be  twice  present  in  my  hope  ! 

To  refuse  to  try  to  separate  wheat  from  chaff  in 
Lowell's  rich  garner  would  be  to  abdicate  the 
critical  function.  I  have  faithfully,  however  im 
perfectly,  endeavored  to  search  for  the  soul  of  the 


Poets  of  Freedom  and  Culture.  203 

poet  behind  his  varying  songs  and  philosophic 
verses.  The  endeavor  is  that  which  Lowell  him 
self  has  more  successfully  made  in  his  criticisms 
of  European  singers.  As  he  has  told  us:  "Not 
failure,  but  low  aim,  is  crime."  His  aim  is  high 
and  his  failure  non-essential  as  compared  with  his 
success.  Two  lines  in  "  The  Cathedral,"  «The 

a  poem  worthy  of  Browning,  remind  us  Cathedral" 
that 

God  is  in  all  that  liberates  and  lifts, 

In  all  that  humbles,  sweetens,  and  consoles ; 

and  he  is  therefore  in  Lowell's  verse.  And  the 
didactic  is  not  less  welcome,  nor  more,  than  the 
pure  spirit  of  poesy  phrased  in  the  same  pro 
foundly  meditative  poem : 

The  bird  I  hear  sings  not  from  yonder  elm  ; 
But  the  flown  ecstasy  my  childhood  heard 
Is  vocal  in  my  mind,  renewed  by  him, 
Haply  made  sweeter  by  the  accumulate  thrill 
That  threads  my  undivided  life  and  steals 
A  pathos  from  the  years  and  graves  between. 

In  divine  thought  and  in  human  perception,  thus 
phrased,  in  the  three  quotations  last  made,  Lowell 
recalls  and  restates  for  us  the  very  secret  of  exist 
ence,  taught  by  seer  and  poet  to  man  in  his  up 
ward  march.  Whittier,  too,  in  unmystic  and 
simple  phrase,  has  many  a  time  unriddled  this 
mystery : 

Beneath  the  moonlight  and  the  snow 

Lies  dead  my  latest  year; 
The  winter  winds  are  wailing  low 

Its  dirges  in  my  ear. 


2O4  American  Literature. 

I  grieve  not  with  the  moaning  wind 

As  if  a  loss  befell ; 
Before  me,  even  as  behind, 

God  is,  and  all  is  well ! 

His  light  shines  on  me  from  above, 

His  low  voice  speaks  within, — 
The  patience  of  immortal  love 

Outwearying  mortal  sin. 

Whittier  and  Lowell,  our  poets  of  freedom,  could 
not  have  sung  the  American  song  had  they  not 
learned  and  interpreted  to  a  willing  folk  the  same 
lesson  of  the  higher  and  poetic  optimism  which 
underlay  Emerson's  every  line.  Such  men  must 
be  reformers,  but  their  earthly  battles  are  fought 
beneath  a  heavenly  star. 

The  name  of  Oliver  Wendell   Holmes  is  natu 
rally  and  honorably  associated  with  those  of  Whit- 

oiiver  Wendell  ^'IGT  an<^  Lowell  as  that  of  our  third 
Holmes,  b.  1809.  p0et  of  freedom  and  culture.  His 

literary  life  began  with  a  ringing  lyric  of  patriot 
ism,  easily  surpassing  the  best  of  the  revolutionary 
songs.  The  English-reading  world  well  knows 
those  indignant  verses,  flung  forth  in  answer  to  a 
proposal  to  dismantle  the  frigate  Constitution,  or 
"Old  Ironsides": 

Ay,  tear  her  tattered  ensign  down! 

Long  has  it  waved  on  high, 
And  many  an  eye  has  danced  to  see 

That  banner  in  the  sky ; 
Beneath  it  rung  the  battle-shout, 

And  burst  the  cannon's  roar; — 
The  meteor  of  the  ocean  air 

Shall  sweep  the  clouds  no  more ! 


Poets   of  Freedom  and  C^clture.  205 

Her  deck,  once  red  with  heroes'  blood, 

Where  knelt  the  vanquished  foe, 
When  winds  were  hurrying  o'er  the  flood, 

And  waves  were  white  below, 
No  more  shall  feel  the  victor's  tread, 

Or  know  the  conquered  knee ; — 
The  harpies  of  the  shore  shall  pluck 

The  eagle  of  the  sea! 

Oh,  better  that  her  shattered  hulk 

Should  sink  beneath  the  wave ; 
Her  thunders  shook  the  mighty  deep, 

And  there  should  be  her  grave ; 
Nail  to  the  mast  her  holy  flag, 

Set  every  threadbare  sail, 
And  give  her  to  the  god  of  storms, — 

The  lightning  and  the  gale ! 

Not  less  intense,  though  more  sober  and  re 
strained,  is  the  noble  song  which  Holmes  wrote 
forty  years  later  for  the  ceremonies  attending  the 
laying  of  the  corner-stone  of  Harvard's  great 
Memorial  Hall,  built  in  honor  of  her  sons  slain  in 
the  Civil  War.  Here  is  the  American  mind,  and 
here  the  unmistakable  touch  of  true  poetry.  In 
the  swing  of  these  stately  and  musical  lines  are 
the  fervor  of  patriotism  and  the  calm  restraint  of 
academic  contemplation,  the  latter  tempering  the 
former,  but  never  quenching  a  single  heat-ray  of 
forceful  devotion.  Holmes,  within  these  sixteen 
lines,  was  performing  the  same  service  done  by 
Lowell  in  his  great  Ode ;  he  was  laying  the 
laurel  of  learning  upon  the  reddened  sword  of 
national  honor : 


206  American  Literature. 

Not  with  the  anguish  of  hearts  that  are  breaking 
Come  we  as  mourners  to  weep  for  our  dead  ; 

Grief  in  our  breasts  has  grown  weary  of  aching, 
Green  is  the  turf  where  our  tears  we  have  shed. 

While  o'er  their  marbles  the  mosses  are  creeping, 
Stealing  each  name  and  its  legend  away, 

Give  their  proud  story  to  Memory's  keeping, 
Shrined  in  the  temple  we  hallow  to-day. 

Hushed  are  their  battle-fields,  ended  their  marches, 
Deaf  are  their  ears  to  the  drum-beat  of  morn, — 

Rise  from  the  sod,  ye  fair  columns  and  arches ! 
Tell  their  bright  deeds  to  the  ages  unborn! 

Emblem  and  legend  may  fade  from  the  portal, 
Keystone  may  crumble  and  pillar  may  fall ; 

They  were  the  builders  whose  work  is  immortal, 
Crowned  with  the  dome  that  is  over  us  all ! 

There  were  poets  at  Harvard  a  generation  ago ! 

Mr.  Stedman  well  says  of  Holmes,  in  his  essay 
on  that  poet  :  "  Though  the  most  direct  and 
obvious  of  the  Cambridge  group,  the  least  given 
to  subtilties,  he  is  our  typical  university  poet ;  the 
minstrel  of  the  college  that  bred  him,  and  within 
whose  liberties  he  has  jested,  sung,  and  toasted, 
from  boyhood  to  what  in  common  folk  would  be 
old  age.  Alma  Mater  has  been  more  to  him  than 
to  Lowell  or  Longfellow, — has  occupied  a  sur 
prising  portion  of  his  range ;  if  we  go  back  to 
Frere  and  Canning,  even  to  Gray,  for  his  like, 
there  is  no  real  prototype."  But  Holmes, 
"  always  a  university  poet,"  is  a  singer  of  freedom 
as  well  as  of  culture.  "  When  the  Civil  War 
broke  out,  this  conservative  poet,  who  had  taken 


Poets   of  Freedom  and  C^dt^ire.  207 

little  part  in  the  agitation  that  preceded  it,  shared 
in  every  way  the  spirit  and  duties  of  the  time. 
None  of  our  poets  wrote  more  stirring  war  lyrics 
during  the  conflict,  none  has  been  more  national 
so  far  as  loyalty,  in  the  Websterian  sense,  to  our 
country  and  her  emblems  is  concerned.  He 
always  has  displayed  the  simple  instinctive  pa 
triotism  of  the  American  minute-man."  * 

"  The  "  scholar  in  politics,"  or  in  national  life, 
does  not  always  show  the  aggressive  radicalism  of  * 
the  young  Lowell ;  and  Holmes  did  not  share  in 
all  the  intense  pioneer  reforms  in  state- 

Wholesome 

craft,    religion,    and    social    life,    which        American 

r    i  •       r   •         1        conservatism. 

were  promoted  by  some  ot  his  mends 
and  literary  contemporaries  in  Massachusetts. 
But  no  one  can  long  read  in  any  one  of  his  books, 
prose  or  verse,  without  discovering  that  "he  is 
patriot,  Unitarian,  and  republican,  though  not 
radical  abolitionist,  "  free-religionist,"  or  phal- 
ansterist.  The  "  Autocrat,"  "  Professor,"  and 
"  Poet "  at  the  Breakfast-Table,  those  original  and 
valuable  books  of  essay-talk,  display  the  man  and 
his  mind  in  round  and  attractive  completeness ; 
and  they  show  that  the  books  are  the  author,  and 
the  author  a  nineteenth-century  American  in 
thought  and  outlook.  What  I  mean  will  be 
apparent  to  every  reader  of  the  Autocrat  series, 
and  it  is  hardly  less  apparent  in  Holmes'  novels  : 
"  Elsie  Venner,"  "  The  Guardian  Angel,"  and  "  A 
Mortal  Antipathy."  These  books,  in  their  fresh- 

*  "  Poets  of  America,"  276-7,  298-9. 


208  American  Literature. 

ness,  alertness,  and  brilliancy  of  delineation,  are 
Holmes' essays  thoroughly  of  New  England;  they 
and  novels.  could  not  have  been  written  in  another 
land ;  and  their  descriptions  and  their  solid  (and 
yet  progressive)  discreetness  of  thought  are 
representative  of  the  soil  and  the  time.  Com 
mon  sense — the  Franklinian  quality — has  no 
better  representative  ;  and  it  is  this  very  common- 
sense  that  prevents  Holmes  from  reaching  the 
highest  success  in  fiction.  "  The  Guardian 
Angel "  narrowly  escapes  being  a  great  novel ; 
but  in  it,  as  in  the  less  meritorious  "  Elsie  Ven- 
ner"  and  the  weaker  "Mortal  Antipathy,"  the 
author's  personality  invades  the  artistic  field. 
Every  page  or  two  he  interrupts  the  narrative  to 
make  a  thrust  at  religious  orthodoxy  or  medical 
heterodoxy ;  to  discuss  his  favorite  theme  of 
atavism  ;  or  to  utter,  like  his  own  Master  Byles 
Gridley,  a  few  "  thoughts  on  the  universe."  His 
themes  are  half  Hawthornesque,  but  their  treat 
ment  is  that  of  the  analytical  and  tersely  didac 
tic  Harvard  professor.  The  man  behind  the 
machine  is  an  inartistic  spectacle,  in  prose  fiction, 
even  if  the  man  is  mindful  and  masterly.  The 
personality  that  is  a  delightful  companion  in  the 
essays,  and  a  "  guide,  philosopher,  and  friend  "  in 
the  biographies  of  Motley  and  Emerson,  intrudes 
in  the  pages  of  what  should  be  a  novel  or  a 
romance.  The  contents  of  the  minor  volumes  of 
essays — "  Soundings  from  the  Atlantic,"  "  Cur 
rents  and  Counter-Currents  in  Medical  Science," 


Poets  of  Freedom  and  Culture.  209 

"  Mechanism  in  Thought  and  Morals,"  etc., — will 
not  keep  within  their  covers,  but  spread  into  the 
would-be  artistic  product. 

The  personal  element,  however,  is  ever  wel 
come  in  the  poems,  and  I  may  add  indispensable. 
Holmes  has  kinship  with  Hood,  personality  of 
Praed,  Thackeray,  and  even  Pope,  Holmes' poems. 
mutatis  mutandis,  as  also  with  Montaigne,  Sterne 
and  Lamb.  Such  a  singer  must  be  intimately  and 
constantly  connected  with  his  song.  He  is  pre-  \ 
eminently  a  lyrist  of  humor,  pathos,  and  occasion  ; 
and  poets  of  this  class  are  poets  who  put  their 
individual  selves  into  iambus  and  trochee.  They 
instruct  while  they  amuse,  and  their  personal 
attractiveness  is  transmuted  into  poetic  force. 
They  are  spectators  of  the  comedies  and  tragedies 
that  make  up  life  :  Balzacs  in  theme,  but  treating 
their  themes  with  somewhat  of  the  heart  and 
humanity  that  spontaneously  sang  themselves  in 
the  lyrics  of  Burns.  Something  akin  to  affection  v 
connects  such  poets  and  their  readers,  when  poet 
and  reader  are  at  their  best.  They  cannot  be 
Shelleys,  but  they  win  by  warmth  though  they 
dazzle  not  by  splendor.  The  wit  of  Holmes  is 
human  as  well  as  intellectual,  though  it  stops  far 
short  of  the  vulgar  or  the  sensational  elements 
which  are  the  bane  of  the  lower  American  fun, 
and  sometimes  of  the  higher.  Whatever  Holmes 
writes  is  not  only  manly  and  characteristic,  but 
characteristic  of  the  man.  His  themes  and 
methods  are  sufficiently  varied,  but  they  are  all 


2io  American  Literature. 

closely  connected  with  the  author  of  "  Every  Man 
his  own  Boswell."  Variety  and  quick  wholesome 
suggestiveness  and  helpfulness  in  the  poems  come 
from  the  same  qualities  in  their  writer. 

Before  speaking  of  his  pathos  and  humor,  and 
of  his  voluminous  and  here-unsurpassed  occa- 
Hoimes  the  si°nal  verse,  one  notes  at  the  start  that 
lyrist.  of  au  the  company  of  American  singers, 

after  Poe,  the  two  who  versify  most  swiftly  and 
sweetly,  our  American  improvis ~atori,  are  Holmes 
and  Bayard  Taylor.  Lyrical  grace  and  aptness 
are  theirs  ;  and  one  of  them  is  likely  to  be  our 
chosen  singer  when  we  want  not  Longfellow's 
sympathy,  Bryant's  austerity,  Lowell's  incisive- 
ness,  Emerson's  masterful  thought.  This  singing 
power  gives  pleasure  in  Holmes'  rollicking  de 
scriptions  and  bits  of  mere  fun  ;  his  after  dinner 
sallies  ;  his  ephemeral  contemporary  satires  ;  his 
best  songs  of  occasion,  like  the  noble  Harvard 
hymn  just  quoted  ;  and  his  downright  master 
pieces,  "  The  Last  Leaf  "  or  "  The  Chambered 
Nautilus." 

In  its  humblest  estate  this  lyrical  power  is  the 
pleasing  jingle  which  properly  accompanies  and 
increases  the  pleasure  derived  from  the  telling 
phrases  of  the  occasional  poems.  There  is  a  le 
gitimate  enjoyment  in  sing-song,  the  border-line 
between  which  and  scansion  is  not  easily  traced. 
One  enjoys  reading  aloud,  with  somewhat  undue 
stress  of  accent,  the  least  ambitious  of  Holmes' 
clever  rhymes,  such  as 


Poets   of  Freedom  and  Culture.  2 1 1 

Where,  O  where  are  life's  lilies  and  roses, 
Nursed  in  the  golden  dawn's  smile  ? 

Dead  as  the  bulrushes  round  little  Moses, 
On  the  old  banks  of  the  Nile. 

Where  are  the  Marys  and  Anns  and  Elizas, 

Loving  and  lovely  of  yore? 
Look  in  the  columns  of  old  Advertisers, — 

Married  and  dead  by  the  score. 

This  easy  verbal  music  is  as  legitimate  in  its 
way  as  Swinburne's  or  Poe's,  as  Moore's  or 
Scott's.  Holmes  intentionally  plays  with  a  lyrical 
faculty  that  is  ready  to  do  his  bidding  in  more 
stately  and  splendid,  more  devout  and  inspiring 
verse  : — 

Say  not  the  Poet  dies  ! 

Though  in  the  dust  he  lies, 
He  cannot  forfeit  his  melodious  breath, 

Unsphered  by  envious  death ! 
Life  drops  the  voiceless  myriads  from  its  role ; 

Their  fate  he  cannot  share, 

Who,  in  the  enchanted  air 
Sweet  with  the  lingering  strains  that  Echo  stole, 

Has  left  his  dearer  self,  the  music  of  his  soul !  * 

Her  hands  are  cold  ;   her  face  is  white  ; 

No  more  her  pulses  come  and  go ; 
Her  eyes  are  shut  to  life  and  light : — 

Fold  the  white  vesture,  snow  on  snow, 

And  lay  her  where  the  violets  blow.f 

!  Not  less  serenely  musical  are  those  sacred  songs 
fthat  are  like  oases  in    the    deserts  of   the  hymn- 

*  Poem  at  the.  dedication  of  the  Halleck  monument,  July  8,  1869. 
t  "Under  the  Violets." 


212  American  Literature. 

books  :  "  O  Love  Divine,  that  stooped  to  share," 
and  "  Lord  of  all  being,  throned  afar."  Many  a 
time  does  the  reader  of  Holmes'  verse,  in  its 
changing  tones,  speak  to  it  as  did  its  author  to 
the  fountain  at  Stratford-on-Avon  : 

Welcome,  thrice  welcome  is  thy  silvery  gleam, 

Thou  long  imprisoned  stream  ! 
Welcome  the  tinkle  of  thy  crystal  beads 
As  plashing  rain-drops  to  the  flowery  meads, 
As  summer's  breath  to  Avon's  whispering  reeds ! 

The  writer  of  poems  of  occasion,  like  the  after- 
dinner  orator,  must  pay  a  high  price  for  immedi- 
occasionai  ate  applause.  He  gets  hearty  laughter 
verse.  ancj  spontaneous  praise,  at  the  expense 
of  being  called  merely  "clever"  or  "neat."  A 
great  event  sometimes,  though  rarely,  calls  forth 
a  great  poem ;  but  occasional  verse  seldom  lives 
long.  The  collected  edition  of  Holmes'  poems 
contains  no  less  than  thirty-two  pieces  connected 
with  the  reunions  or  the  deaths  of  his  Harvard 
class  of  '29,  and  some  seventy-five  more  called 
forth  by  Phi  Beta  Kappa  anniversaries,  centen 
nials,  medical  meetings,  birthday  feasts,  scenes 
of  welcome  and  farewell,  theatre-openings,  and 
similar  seasons.  His  writing  is  largely  "  Rhymes 
of  an  Hour,"  as  he  modestly  entitled  one  of  his 
collections.  It  cannot  live,  for  the  adequate 
reason  that  most  of  it  is  not  re-read.  Originality, 
"Rhymes of  brilliancy,  the  surprise  which  is  the  es- 
anHour."  sence  of  wit,  rhythmical  melody,  cannot 
save  it.  But  its  sum-total  of  agreeable  memories 


Poets  of  Freedom  and  Culture.  213 

has  materially  and  justly  been  added  to  our 
appreciation  of  the  merit  of  the  author's  more 
ambitious  and  enduring  verse.  These  occa 
sional  poems,  like  the  lyrics  destined  for  longer 
life,  are  eminently  free  from  imitativeness.  The 
emancipation  of  American  letters  from  foreign 
fashions — not  necessarily  from  foreign  thought 
— owes  much  to  Doctor  Holmes'  sturdy  and 
successful,  because  natural,  display  of  inde 
pendent  genius.  The  "  cleverness  "  of  this  char 
acteristic  writer,  not  less  than  his  deeper  pathos 
and  humor,  has  played  its  part  in  the  intellectual 
movement  of  his  time  ;  it  has  made  it  easier  for 
everybody  to  follow  his  own  bent  and  say  his 
own  say.  Holmes'  occasional  poems  have  simply 
amused  hundreds  of  delighted  hearers,  most  of 
whom  have  hardly  stopped,  at  the  moment,  to 
think  of  any  higher  result ;  but  sooner  or  later  they 
reflect  that  here  is  more  than  an  individual  neatness, 
here  are  an  alertness  and  daring  felicity  that  have 
in  them  something  national.  It  is  even  apparent 
elsewhere  ;  for  an  English  writer,  whose  name  I 
know  not,  has  justly  associated,  in  this  regard, 
"  Mr.  Lowell  and  Dr.  Holmes — men  who  combine 
the  culture  of  the  Old  World  with  the  indefinable 
and  incommunicable  spirit  of  the  New." 

As  I  turn  over  the  leaves  of  Holmes'  complete 
poetical  works,  I  find  just  half-a-dozen  poems 
i  which  stand  out  in  most  my  mind  as  Ho]mes  mas- 
I  significant  :  "  The  Last  Leaf,"  "  The  terpWs. 
I  Chambered  Nautilus,"  "  The  Voiceless,"  "The 
I  Deacon's  Masterpiece,"  "  ^Estivation,"  and 


214  American  Literature. 

"  Homesick  in  Heaven."  "  The  Last  Leaf"  is 
one  of  those  creations  which  are  struck  off  at  a 
heat  and  remain  unique  in  literature.  That  union 
of  pathos  and  humor  which  distinguishes  every 
great  wit  is  manifestly  here,  expressed  with  the 
novelty  of  form  which  must  be  added  to  natural 
ness  of  picture,  if  the  word-painter  would  make  a 
highly  significant  impression  : 

I  saw  him  once  before, 
As  he  passed  by  the  door. 

And  again 

The  pavement  stones  resound, 
As  he  totters  o'er  the  ground 

With  his  cane. 

They   say  that   in   his  prime, 
Ere  the  pruning-knife  of  Time 

Cut  him  down, 
Not  a  better  man  was  found 
By  the  Crier  on  his  round 

Through  the  town. 

But  now  he  walks  the  streets, 
And  he  looks  at  all  he  meets 

Sad  and  wan, 

And  he  shakes  his  feeble  head, 
That  it  seems  as  if  he   said, 
"They  are  gone." 

The  mossy  marbles  rest 

On  the  lips  that  he  has  prest 

In   their  bloom, 

And  the  names  he  loved   to  hear 
Have  been   carved  for  many  a  year 

On   the   tomb. 


Poets  of  Freedom  and  Culture.  215 

My  Grandmamma  has  said — 
Poor  old  lady,   she  is  dead 

Long  ago — 

That  he  had  a  Roman  nose, 
And  his  cheek  was  like  a  rose 

In  the  snow. 

But  now  his  nose  is  thin, 
And  it  rests  upon  his  chin 

Like   a  staff, 

And  a  crook  is  in  his  back, 
And  a  melancholy  crack 

In  his   laugh. 

I  know  it  is  a   sin 
For  me  to  sit  a  dn  grin 

At  him  here  ; 

But  the  old  three-cornered   hat, 
And  the  breeches,  and  all  that, 

Are  so  queer! 

And  if  I  should  live  to  be 
The  last  leaf  upon  the  tree 

In  the   spring, 

Let  them  smile,   as  I  do  now, 
At  the  old  forsaken  bough 

Where  I  cling. 

I  must  remember  that  these  pages  attempt  to 
present  a  history,  not  an  anthology  ;  but  the 
quaintly  successful  poem  repeats  itself  in  my  ear. 
This  "  Last  Leaf"  is  printed  on  the  first  leaf  of 
the  collected  edition  of  Holmes'  poems;  but  it 
will  indeed  be  the  last  to  fall,  for  such  an  artless 
piece  of  art,  such  a  rare  union  of  unadorned 
humor  arid  tender  pathos  cannot  die.  Poe  (in 
The  Pioneer  for  March,  1843)  made  it  the  subject 


216  American  Literature. 

of  an  elaborated  metrical  analysis,  in  which  his 
well-known  skill  in  scansion  failed  to  present  a 
proper  scheme,  notwithstanding  his  patient  dis 
cussion  and  elaborate  nomenclature.*  The  music 
of  the  pathetic  song,  in  its  author's  mind,  was 

"  More  of  feeling  than  of  hearing, 
Of  the  heart  than  of  the  ear," — 

it  sung  itself,  like  the  best  of  Wordsworth's 
"  Lyrical  Ballads."  Scansion,  the  botanizing  of 
poetry,  is  a  fit  and  needful  study,  but  sometimes 
it  is  well  to  let  the  poem  and  the  flower  alone  in 
their  beauty.  "  The  Last  Leaf"  is  a  lily  which 
neither  Poe  nor  I  can  paint. 

"The  Chambered  Nautilus,"  originally  printed 
in  the  "  Autocrat,"  is  one  of  the  illustrations  of 
Holmes'  occasional  fondness  for  the  measures 
of  the  ode,  which  he  might  have  used,  had  he 
wished,  more  often,  and  with  an  evident  success. 
To  write  an  ode  is  as  hard  as  to  write  blank 
verse,  but  more  than  once  does  Holmes  show 
the  promise  and  potency  of  a  triumph  never  fully 
essayed.  Meanwhile  he  here  achieves  a  success 
hardly  less  :  that  of  writing  a  poem  of  self-evident 
beauty,  inculcating  a  moral  lesson.  "  The  Voice 
less  "  is  a  laurel-wreath  of  recognition  and  reward, 
laid  upon  the  grave  of  mute,  anonymous  human 

*  This  analysis  had  a  curious  history.  It  was  not  retained  in  the  collected 
edition  of  Poe's  works  ;  a  part  of  the  manuscript  was  given  after  many  years 
to  Dr.  Holmes  by  Robert  Carter,  one  of  the  editors  of  The  Pioneer,  who 
had  evidently  forgotten  how  it  came  into  his  possession  ;  and  this  part  was 
reprinted  as  unpublished  matter  in  the  introduction  to  an  illustrated  edition 
of"  The.  Last  Leaf,"  1885. 


Poets  of  Freedom  and  Culture.  217 

suffering.  "  Homesick  in  Heaven,"  in  its  idea, 
suggests  a  parallel  with  Rossetti's  "  Blessed  Dam- 
ozel,"  but  is  manifestly  an  outgrowth  of  the 
author's  own  thought,  which  more  than  once  had 
touched  upon  some  kindred  theme.  Here,  as 
seldom  occurs  when  such  a  thought  rises  in 
Holmes'  mind,  the  execution  falls  manifestly 
below  the  idea. 

Of  all  the  many  humorous  poems  produced  by 
Holmes  in  half-a-century,  my  favorites  are  j'  The 
Deacon's  Masterpiece "  and  "^Estivation."  The 
first,  with  its  swift  movement,  its  Yankee  spirit, 
its  country  pictures,  its  sui  generis  catastrophe, 
and  its  delicious  ultimate  line — "  Logic  is  logic. 
That's  all  I  say"-— is  faultless  fun.  The  second 
poem  one  longs  to  send  back  the  ages,  or 'beyond 
the  "  iron  gate"  of  which  Holmes  afterward  sang, 
to  that  true  prose-poet  and  heartful  old  English 
doctor,  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  whose  chief  writings 
James  T.  Fields  once  aptly  dedicated  to  John 
Brown  and  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 

As  the  literary  career  of  Doctor  Holmes  is 
viewed  from  the  close  of  the  century  it  so  nearly 
covers,  one  perceives  that  he  has  been  a  Holmes' 
poet  as  well  as  a  humorist,  a  teacher  as  career- 
well  as  a  "  man-pi easer,"  if  I  may  use  the  word  in 
an  innocent  sense.  This  specially  representative 
Bostonian  poet  has  been  a  natural  and  catholic 
singer,  and  he  has  constantly  upheld  right 
canons  of  living.  Bigotry,  of  many  names,  is 
saddened  by  the  reflection  that  his  books  are  not 
wholly  mortal.  Manliness  finds  in  him  a  friend, 


218  American  Literature. 

and  culture  a  companion.  Though  as  a  poet  he  is 
almost  great  but  assuredly  not  great,  while  as  a 
prose  essayist  he  must  ever  stand  below  the 
greater  American  whose  biography  he  wrote,  his 
place  on  the  shelf  is  characteristic  and  likely  to 
remain  undusty.  A  later  Franklin  in  riper  days, 
he  has  added  to  the  valuable  part  of  creative  lit- 

-erature,  while  he  has  shown  how  an  intense  and 
perpetual  localism,  under  the  touch  of  a  true 
though  narrow  genius,  and  aided  by  culture, 

imay  earn  a  place  in  the  world's  republic  of 
letters. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

TONES    AND    TENDENCIES    OF    AMERICAN    VERSE. 

AFTER  poetry  in  America  could  make  some 
boasts  in  the  matter  of  quantity,  and  even -in  that 
of  quality  in  a  lesser  degree,  it  was  struck  by  that 
wave  of  sentimentality  which,  following  sentimen- 
the  legitimate  revival  of  romanticism,  had  tality- 
submerged  so  much  of  the  English  literary  field. 
I  need  not  stop  to  say  that  when  poetry  ceases  to 
express  sentiment  it  will  die;,  and  that  Heine  and 
Longfellow  need  not  retreat  before  criticism  or 
classicism  or  any  other  rival  spirit  in  modern 
song.  The  prevalent  lack  of  sentiment  is  a  fault 
in  Emerson's  verse,  notwithstanding  its  obvious 
power ;  while  the  presence  of  deep,  true  feeling  in 
poets  like  Shelley  or  Keats  increases  the  royal 
splendor  of  the  one  and  the  Hellenic  grace  of  the 
other.  But  sentiment  that  consists  in  part  of 
bombast,  Parnassian  attitudinizing  or  extrava 
gant  apostrophe  is  not  usually  a  thing  which  the 
centuries  value.  Nor,  when  these  things  are 
absent,  is  it  a  mark  of  the  greatest  genius  to 
express  the  cheaply  obvious  in  thinly  tinkling 
rhymes.  "  Feeling,"  to  be  sure,  is  better  than 
indifTerentism,  and  if  either  heart  or  brain  must 
depart  from  letters  we  will  dismiss  the  latter  first  ; 
but  we  prefer  imagination  to  that  quality  which 

219 


220  American  Literature. 

the  old  novelists  called  "sensibility."  In  Amer 
ican  sentimental  verse,  forty  or  fifty  years  ago,  it 
is  not  difficult  to  discover  the  objectionable  qual 
ities  just  named  ;  and  the  general  absence  of  the 
element  of  imagination  has  already  banished  it  to 
the  forgotten  land  once  occupied  by  Mrs.  He- 
mans,  "  L.  E.  L."  and  Eliza  Cook. 

It  should  fairly  be  admitted,  at  the  start,  that 
in  the  poems  of  Willis  and   Mrs.  Sig- 

Nathaniel 

Parker  Willis,   ourney,   as  well  as  of  Mrs.  Frances  S. 

I807-I867.  ^  1  111  |.       1  ! 

Osgood  and  the  lesser  lights,  there  is 
something  of  high  thought,  sincere  feeling,  occa 
sional  effective  utterance,  and  poetic  touch.  The 
time-spirit  of  a  sentimental  age  was  not  so  foolish 
as  to  be  utterly  misled  in  its  enthusiasms.  From 
Willis  and  Mrs.  Sigourney  can  readily  be  selected 
a  few  poems  that  have  survived  the  critical  con 
tempt,  or  indifference  worse  than  contempt,  which 
followed  upon  a  temporary  fame  once  equalling 
Longfellow's  and  far  surpassing  Emerson's.  Wil 
lis,  and  not  Bryant,  was  the  typical  New  York 
poet,  forty  years  since ;  while  in  distant  country 
towns  his  metrical  paraphrases  of  the  Bible,  his 
verses  of  observation,  and  his  lyrics  of  affection 
and  reflection,  had  a  hearty  welcome  among 
men  and  women  whose  devout  or  secular  aspira 
tions  and  emotions  had  not  elsewhere  found  so 
apt  expression.  But  that  is  all  ;  his  "  Poems 
Sacred,  Passionate,  and  Humorous"  are  mostly 
forgotten,  in  their  three  divisions  ;  and  his  many 
books  of  once-enjoyable  stories  and  sketches  of 
life  and  travel  have  gone  the  way  of  the  dead 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American   Verse.     221 

magazines  and  newspapers  in  which  some  of  them 
were  printed.  He  chose,  though  possessed  of 
brilliancy,  to  be  affected  and  hurried,  and  paid  the 
penalty.  Not  even  the  discreet  endeavors  of  his 
biographer,  Professor  Beers,  could  popularize  the 
best  of  these  prose  productions  in  a  recently- 
selected  volume ;  the  ordinary  reader  knows  little 
more  of  Willis  than  the  not  unmeritorious  script 
ural  pieces  upon  Absalom  and  Hagar  in  the  Wil 
derness,  and  the  lyric  beginning  "  The  shadows 
lay  along  Broadway,"  which  Poe  (whom  Willis 
nobly  befriended)  so  heartily  admired,  and  in 
which  he  found  a  true  imagination  and  an  impres 
sive  grace,  dignity,  and  pathos.  Willis  was  a 
sort  of  lesser  Southey,  in  his  money-making  liter 
ary  industry  and  facility  in  prose  and  verse,  his 
occasional  strength  or  music  of  utterance,  and  his 
beautiful  and  unjealous  self-sacrifice  in  promoting 
the  work  and  fame  of  other  writers.  He  was  a 
power  not  to  be  ignored  in  the  development  of 
letters  in  New  York. 

Among  Willis'  contemporaries,  beloved  by 
many  readers  who  sincerely  believed  that  they 
were  "  fond  of  poetry,"  were  some  men  and  more 
women  who  were  capable  of  manufacturing  verses 
that  were  occasionally  pleasing,  and  of  turning 
out  rhymes  in  which  the  sense  was  not  always 
sacrificed  to  the  sound.  Copious  illustrations  of 
their  products  may  be  found  in  that  indispensable 
piece  of  pioneer  industry,  the  Duyckincks'  "  Cy 
clopaedia  of  American  Literature,"  or  in  the  still 
more  voluminous  anthologies  of  Rev.  Rufus  Wil- 


222  American  Literature. 

mot  Griswold.  Upon  many  of  them  Poe  be 
stowed  a  critical  smile  or  frown.  Their  "poems" 
were  declaimed  by  school-boys  and  pasted  into 
the  scrap-books  of  young  lovers ;  and  to  this  day 
some  of  them  are  warmly  remembered  by  readers 
who  cannot  deem  just  the  neglect  which  has 
enveloped  them.  Their  one  great  merit  was  their 
tender  heart  ;  but  not  even  this  could  cover  their 
multitude  of  literary  sins.  In  brief,  they  had 
most  of  the  demerits  of  Mrs.  Browning  without 
her  unquestionable  genius.  Their  work  was  on 
the  whole  humbly  beneficent,  for  it  helped  the 
general  public  in  a  transition  time, — at  least  nega 
tively,  while  it  could  not  harm  the  abler  minds, 
nor,  in  its  nature,  could  it  be  lastingly  mischiev 
ous.  When  I  think  of  the  genuine  love  of  man 
and  nature,  the  sincere  moral  helpfulness,  and 
the  half-a-hundred  blameless  volumes  of  Mrs. 
Lydia  Howard  Sigourney,  I  regret  that  literary  justice 
sfgoumey,  permits  the  critic  to  do  no  more  than 
1791-1865.  chronicle  the  death  of  her  fame.  But 
facts  are  inexorable ;  such  verse  cannot  long  out 
live  the  contemporary  fugitive  prose  ;  and  obvi 
ous  sentiment  expressed  with  hurried  facility  is  a 
mark  of  the  humbler  and  more  perishable  forms 
of  poetry.  The  epitaph  of  nearly  all  such  pro 
ductions,  once  deemed  "  contributions  to  Amer 
ican  literature,"  is  to  be  found,  alas,  in  the  first  of 
Holmes'  stanzas  quoted  on  page  211. 

Literature,  however  great,  does  not  take  the 
place  held  by  sentiment  and  religion  in  the  hearts 
of  the  majority  of  mankind.  Tastes  and  capaci- 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American    Verse.     223 

ties,  furthermore,  are  not  always  Shakesperean  or 
Emersonian.  Some  of  the  successes  of  Long- 
fellow  and  Whittier  are  merely  the  result  of  their 
attainment,  by  similar  but  more  successful  meth 
ods,  of  that  which  Willis  and  Mrs.  Sigourney 
could  but  seek.  Our  best  patriotic  ballads  and 
popular  lyrics  are  of  course  based  upon  sentiment, 
aptly  expressed  by  the  poet  and  instinctively  felt 
by  the  reader.  Hence,  just  is  the  fame  and  true 
is  the  love  bestowed  upon  the  choicest  songs  of 
our  "single-poem  poets":  upon  Samuel  Wood- 
worth's  "  Old  Oaken  Bucket,"  Albert  G.  Greene's 
"  Old  Grimes  is  Dead,"  Thomas  Dunn  English's 
"Ben  Bolt,"  George  P.  Morris'  "Wood-  Popular 
man,  Spare  that  Tree,"  Coates  Kinney's  lyncs' 
"  The  Rain  upon  the  Roof,"  Mrs.  Allen's  "  Rock 
me  to  Sleep,  Mother,"  Julia  Ward  Howe's  ma 
jestic  <l  Battle  Hymn  of  the  Republic,"  Thomas 
Buchanan  Read's  "  Sheridan's  Ride,"  or  Francis 
M,  Finch's  "The  Blue  and  the  Gray."  Kinney, 
neither  dazzled  nor  misled  by  the  glow  of  sponta 
neous  favor  bestowed  upon  his  best-known  poem, 
continued  through  life  to  study  and  to 
polish,  until,  in  his  seventh  decade,  he 


collected,  in  a  volume  of  no  great  size, 
poems  so  "wise  in  optimistic  thought  and  so  definite 
in  their  varied  artistic  form  that  they  would  readily 
have  given  him  fame  in  our  early  verse-days,  fifty 
years  agone.  The  American  singers,  with  all  their 
rush  of  enthusiasm,  have  not  been  utterly  lacking 
in  reserve,  though  too  few  have  followed  Kinney's 
sanely  deliberate  method. 


224  American  Literature. 

To  this  select  list  of  lyrics  I  must  not  allow 
personal  preference  to  add  the  poems  of  the  late 
Elbridge  Jefferson  Cutler,  nor  an  anonymous 
tribute  to  "  The  Confederate  Flag," — the  gem  of 
the  Southern  poetry  of  the  civil  war. 

A  certain  "seal  of  "approval,"  though  not  a 
large  one,  has  been  set  by  popular  verdict,  and  by 
the  iterated  opinion  of  competent  critics  or  poetic 
associates,  upon  the  "  War  Lyrics"  of  Henry 
Howard  Brownell,  almost  the  only  Northern  poet 
Henry  Howard  whose  reputation,  though  a  dwindling 
Browneii,  One,  rests  solely  upon  his  vigorous  lyr- 

r820-i872.  .       .    &  ,      * 

ics  and  graphic  descriptions  of  the 
great  internecine  struggle.  His  "  Bay  Fight"  is  a 
swiftly  effective  verse-story  of  Farragut's  battle  at 
Mobile,  and  might  well  be  read  beneath  St.  Gau- 
dens'  spirited  statue  of  that  great  naval  com 
mander,  whose  deeds  it  enthusiastically  commem 
orates  in  lines  that  can  hardly  stop  to  obey  the 
stricter  laws  of  scansion,  but  hurry  along  like 
those  of  a  newspaper  report  of  the  engagement. 
Similar,  but  marked  still  more  'by  the  currente 
calamo  manner,  is  Forceythe  Willson's  "  Rhyme 
of  the  Master's  Mate,"  describing  the  fresh-water 
conflict  at  Fort  Henry.  Appearing  almost  simul- 
B  ron  For  taneously  with  Brownell's  lyrics,  it  was 
ceythe  wiiison,  not  unnaturally  assigned,  by  some 

readers,  to  the  same  hand.  Willson's 
"  Old  Sergeant"  is  better  known,  being,  indeed, 
one  of  the  most  familiar  of  the  civil  war  poems ; 
but  aside  from  its  subject  it  is  essentially  less 
worthy  of  praise  than  Willson's  "  Autumn  Song," 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American    Verse.     225 

"  No  More,"  or  "  The  Voice"  —  the  last  is  a  poem 
which  any  writer  might  deem  one  of  his  successes, 
as  measured  by  its  fit  union  of  thought  and  form. 
Among  all  American  songs  of  sentiment,  none 
are  more  characteristic  of  the  soil,  none  more 
genuine  and  spontaneous  than  the  folk-songs 
of  which  both  words  and  music  were  written 
by  Stephen  C.  Foster.  •"  The  Old 


Folks  at  Home,"    "My  Old  Kentucky   Collins  Foster, 

,     ,  1826-1864. 

Home,    and  others   scarcely  less  popu 

lar,  voiced  very  sweetly  and  aptly  the  hopes  and 
fears,  the  happy  home-life  and  the  bloody  inexora 
ble  tragedy  of  the  Southern  slaves  before  the  war. 
Both  light  and  shade  of  African  life  are  here  —  the 
sunny  noontide  joy  and  the  midnight  woe.  The 
words,  with  their  simple  pictures  of  nature  and 
their  unsophisticated  pathos,  and  the  music,  melo 
diously  expressing  the  whole  thought  of  the 
words,  are  of  the  land,  the  climate,  and  the  time. 
The  crude  strength  of  the  interesting  and  indige 
nous  slave-songs  of  semi-Israelitish  oppression  and 
prophetic  triumph  seemed  to  serve  as  Foster's 
basis,  upon  which  his  art  built  symmetrical  songs, 
all  his  own  and  yet  such  as  the  slaves,  under  more 
favorable  conditions,  might  have  framed  for  them- 

|  selves.     That  Foster  was  a  poet  is  proved  —  one  is 

I  tempted  to  say  —  by  a  single  line  like 

By'n  by  hard  times  comes  a-knocking  at  the  door 

in   "  My   Old  Kentucky   Home,"  which   seems  to 
me  worth  quoting  entire,  as  a  true  poem  : 
15 


226  American  Literature. 

The  sun  shines  bright  in  the  old  Kentucky  home, 

'Tis  summer,  the  darkies  are  gay; 
The  corn-top's  ripe,  and  the  meadow's  in  the  bloom, 

While  the  birds  make  music  all  the  day. 
The  young  folks  roll  on  the  little  cabin  floor, 

All  nierry,  all  happy  and  bright; — 
By'n  by  hard  times  comes  a-knocking  at  the  door, 

Then  my  old  Kentucky  home,  good-night ! 

Weep  no  more,  my  lady, 

Oh !  weep  no  more  to-day ! 
We  will  sing  one  song  for  the  old  Kentucky  home, 

For  the  old  Kentucky  home,  far  away. 

They  hunt  no  more  for  the  possum  and  the  coon, 

On  the  meadow,  the  hill,  and  the  shore; 
They  sing  no  more  by  the  glimmer  of  the  moon, 

On  the  bench  by  the  old  cabin  door. 
The  day  goes  by  like  a  shadow  o'er  the  heart, 

With  sorrow,  where  all  was  delight : 
The  time  has  come  when  the  darkies  have  to  part, 

Then  my  old  Kentucky  home,  good-night ! 

The  head  must  bow,  and  the  back  will  have  to  bend, 

Wherever  the  darkey  may  go: 
A  few  more  days,  and  the  trouble  all  will  end, 

In  the  field  where  the  sugar-canes  grow. 
A  few  more  days  for  to  tote  the  weary  load, 

No  matter,  'twill  never  be  light, 
A  few  more  days  till  we  totter  on  the  road, 

Then  my  old  Kentucky  home,  good-night ! 

Weep  no  more,  my  lady, 

Oh !  weep  no  more  to-day  ! 
We  will  sing  one  song  for  the  old  Kentucky  home, 

For  the  old  Kentucky  home,  far  away. 

"  The  Old  Folks  at  Home  "  is  not  less  veritably 
a  poem;    and  in  its  melody  Foster   created  the 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American   Verse.     227 

best  musical  composition  as  yet  produced  in  a 
country  that  pours  its  gold  into  the  pockets  of 
European  singers  and  players,  but  is  even  poorer 
than  England  in  its  original  musical  product. 
But  music,  as  a  rule,  lags  behind  the  other  arts  of 
civilization. 

None  but  superficial  critics  or  jaded  readers 
insist  that  the  only  characteristic  and  original 
element  in  American  literature  is  that  which  dis 
tinctly  and  constantly  "  smacks  of  the  poetryof 
soil."  We  have  traced  the  local  and  thesoil 
national  idea  through  the  development  of  Ameri 
can  thought,  and  have  noted  its  constant  appear 
ance  in  the  writings  of  the  greater  American 
poets.  One  should  not  claim  that  this  idea,  defi 
nitely  expressed,  is  the  sole  test  of  value  and  inter 
est  in  verse  ;  he  should  rather  find  in  it  a  theme 
of  occasional  but  genuine  power,  appearing  as  often 
as  usual  in  other  literatures,  and  displaying  itself 
according  to  the  varying  influences  of  place,  time, 
and  man.  Fidelity  to  scene  and  character  ex 
plained  the  wide  popularity  which  was 

won  by  Dr.   Holland's  narrative  poem          Holland, 
-r^.         «  ,     ,  1819-1881. 

"  Bitter-Sweet,  and  the  more  senti 
mental  and  less  meritorious  "  Kathrina."  In 
these,  and  in  his  readable  and  "  native-American  " 
novels,— "Miss  Gilbert's  Career,"  "The  Story  of 
Sevenoaks,"  etc., — the  author  made  wholesome 
national  honesty  and  pluck,  against  that  back 
ground  of  cheap  rascality  that  is  so  easily  to  be 
found,  a  theme  for  descriptive  verse  and  permis 
sibly  didactic  fiction.  None  of  our  writers  has 


228  American  Literature. 

better  understood  the  average  national  heart. 
The  real  country-life  of  eastern  America  also  ap- 
john  pears  in  the  novels  of  J.  T.  Trowbridge, 

?™4,  whose  "Neighbor  Jackwood"  sur- 
passes  any  story  by  Holland  as  a  prose- 
drama,  faithful  to  the  New  England  character  and 
its  environment.  A  wholesome  and  sympathetic 
portrayal  of  human  nature  underlies  his  best  piece 
of  fiction,  *'  Coupon  Bonds,"  and  his  most  success 
ful  poem,  "The  Vagabonds,"  both  of  which  take 
their  place  in  the  complex  library  of  national  de 
lineation.  Trowbridge  sang  of  the  homeless  wan 
derer  and  his  dog  all  the  more  effectively  because 
he  had  elsewhere  described  so  well  the  comfort 
able  home-life  of  the  American  farmer's  family. 
Tender  knowledge  is  the  groundwork  for  all  suc 
cess  in  folk-song.  This  "  criticism  of  life "  has 
been  called  the  poet's  theme ;  and  it  ap- 

John  God-  r  . 

frey  Saxe,  pears  here  and  there  even  in  the  midst  of 
1816-1887.  F 

the  rollicking  fun  and  mveterately  mul 
tiplied  puns  of  the  burly,  manly,  friendly  Ver- 
monter  Saxe,  the  facile  humorist  of  a  bygone 
day,  who  wrote  at  least  one  lyric  worthy  of  Praed : 
"  Wouldn't  You  Like  to  Know." 

The  essential  unity  of  American  life,  increasing 
rather  than  diminishing  as  the  great  tide  of  popu 
lation  sweeps  westward,  is  shown  in  such  a  book 
John  James  as  Piatt's  "  Idyls  and  Lyrics  of  the  Ohio 
Piatt,b.i835.  Valley,"  in  which  man  and  landscape  and 
tone  are  characteristically  at  one.  The  prairies  of 
the  westernland,  and  the  sunshine  and  pathos  of 
the  full  rural  life  of  the  broad  interior  states, 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American    Verse.     229 

while  they  have  a  flavor  of  their  own,  in  such 
idyls  as  these,  are  closely  kin  to  the  heart  of 
Bayard  Taylor's  Pennsylvania  ballads  and  Whit- 
tier's  songs  of  New  England.  I  like  to  turn  to 
the  admirably-drawn  frontispiece  to  Mr.  Piatt's 
"  Idyls,"  and  look  long  and  half-reverently  at  the 
rough  and  homely  yet  characteristically  manly  and 
self-reliant  face  of  Piatt's  "  Mower  in  Ohio,"  an 
incarnation,  whether  in  picture  or  verse,  of  aver 
age  American  manhood. 

The  old  man  is  making  hay  all  alone,— 

"  And  only  the  bees  are  abroad  at  work  with  me  in  the  clover 
here,"— 

for  he  has  sent  his  boys  to  triumph  or  to  die  with 
the  Northern  army.  Meanwhile  to  Hayne  and 
Timrod,  far  in  the  south,  their  deathless  heroism 
seems  paralleled  by  the  devotion  of  the  Confed 
erate  youth.  With  equal  sincerity  the  Paui 
laureates  of  blue  and  of  gray  were  ex- 
claiming,  with  Hayne,  in  those  tumult- 
uous  years  : 

Look  round  us  now ;  how  wondrous,  how  sublime 
The  heroic  lives  we  witness  ;  far  and  wide 
Stern  vows  by  sterner  deeds   are  justified  ; 
Self-abnegation,  calmness,  courage,  power, 
Sway,  with  a  rule  august,  our  stormy  hour, 
Wherein  the  loftiest  hearts  have  wrought  and  died — 
Wrought  grandly  and  died  smiling. 

But  South  and  North  seemed  too  benumbed 
with  wound,  or  seared  by  fire,  to  sing  many  songs 
of  fit  honor  and  acclaim  for  the  heroic  living  and 


230  American  Literature. 

the  martyred  dead.  Hayne's  poems  of  peaceful 
life  and  lovely  nature  are  better  than  his  war- 
songs  ;  and,  indeed,  his  historical,  Revolutionary 
"  Battle  of  King's  Mountain "  is  a  nobler  lyric 
than  those  he  sang  in  the  later  strife. 

The  South  has  thus  far  produced  but  one  poet  | 
of  the  first  rank — Poe,  though  haply  born  in  Bos 
ton  and  living  in   Philadelphia  and  New  York,  is 
to  be  ranked  as  a  Southerner   in  his  origins  of 
ancestry  and  education.     Of    its    singers  of  the  \ 
second  grade  Hayne  is   chief;  his  verse  displays  \ 
the  wealth  and  warmth  of  the  landscape  of  South 
Carolina  and  Georgia,  the  loneliness  of  the  "  pine 
barrens"  where  nature  seems  unmolested,  or  the 
swish  of  the  wild  Southern  sea.     As  a  sonnetteer,   j 
too,    his    place    is    not    far    below    Longfellow's ; 
American  achievements  in  this  important  division  ; 
of  verse    have    not    been    inconsiderable.     When 
Hayne,  for  a  short  period  in   his  life,    fell  under 
the  influence  of  Morris-mediaevalism,  the  merit  of 
his  verse  dwindled  to  that  of  occasional  lines  or 
passages  ;  but  when  he  sang  his   own  song  in  his 
own   land   it  was  that  of  a  true   poet,  who  heard 

"  Low  words  of  alien  music,  softly  sung. 
And  rhythmic  sighs  in  some  sweet  unknown  tongue." 

Far   from  the    distributing   centres  of   literature,  ^ 
and    unaided    by   the   stimulus    or   the    criticism 
that  come   alone   from    association   with    brother 
authors,    Hayne   wrote    too    much,    nor   polished  v 
with    sufficiently  painstaking    art.      Hard,  too,  is 
the  lot  of  the  bard  whose  whole  life  is  devoted  to 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American   Verse.     231 

letters  in  a  lonely  land.  I  do  not  think,  however, 
that  deductions  and  limitations  of  excess  or  of 
failure  can  deny  the  poet's  crown  to  him  who 
wrote  "  Lethe,"  "  Under  Sentence,"  "  Above  the 
Storm,"  "  Pre-existence,"  "  Underground,"  "  The 
Dryad  of  the  Pine,"  "The  Pine's  Mystery," 
"  Love's  Autumn,"  "  The  Vision  at  Twilight," 
"The  Inevitable  Calm,"  "The  Dead  Look," 
"Over  the  Waters,"  "  Forecastings,"  "The 
Visionary  Face,"  the  sonnets  "  At  Last "  and 
"  Earth  Odors  after  Rain,"  and  the  dramatic 
sketch  "Antonio  Melidori." 

Another  characteristic  poet  in  Georgia  was 
Henry  Timrod,  whose  poems  Hayne  edited.  His 

little  book  of    Verse    is    SO    gOOd    in    its     Henry  Timrod, 

martial  and  general  work,  that  it  1829-1867. 
makes  us  speculate  on  the  possibilities  which 
might  have  come  in  a  longer  life  of  one  whose 
inspiration  was  so  vivid  that  he  half  expected  the 
incarnate  spirit  of  springtide  to  appear  in  rosy 
flesh  before  him,  in  his  woodland  walks,  exclaim 
ing, 

"  Behold  me  !  I  am  May  !  " 

The  poetry  of  a  third  Confederate,  Sidney 
Lanier,  is  dear  to  an  audience  fit  and  now  more 
than  few,  which  often  cherishes  the  memory  of  the 
early  dead  singer  in  biographical  sketch,  memorial 
tablet,  or  commendatory  verse.  None  can  fail  to 

{  recognize  in  his  poems  the  time-spirit,  the  land- 
song,  and  the  true  poetic  touch,  especially  in 

;  "The  Marshes  of  Glynn,"  "Sunrise,"  "The  Song 


232  American  Literature. 

of  the  Chattahoochee,"  "The  Mo  eking- Bird,"  or 
the  more  ambitious  "  Corn."  His  were  a  larger 
mind  and  a  stronger  hand  than  Timrod's  or 
even  Hayne's,  yet  his  was  a  fatal  fault  :  he  lacked^ 
that  spontaneity  which  is  the  chief  pleasure  in  the^ 
verse  of  Hayne  and  Timrod.  In  the  midst  of  the 
products  of  a  genius  that  certainly  at  times 
seemed  large,  and  that  was  bold  to  the  extent  of 
eccentricity,  are  the  too-conspicuous  signs  of 
mere  intellectual  experiment  and  metrical  or 
Sidney  Lanier,  vel"bal  extravaganza.  Lanier  theorizes 
1842-1881.  jn  verse  -  the  practice-hand  seeks  to 
strike  chords  than  can  only  come  from  the  impas 
sioned  and  self-forgetful  singer  of  nature  and  thei 
soul.  His  analytical  and  exhaustive  musical  stud 
ies — applied  to  literature  in  "  The  Science  of 
English  Verse" — greatly  harmed  his  creative 
work. 

The    wild    western    scenes    of    the    numerous 
poems    of    "Joaquin"    Miller    owe    their   success 
chiefly  to  the  interest  aroused  (especially  in   Eng 
land)  by  their  descriptions  of  men  and 

Cmcmnatus  '       J 

Hiner  Miller,     women  and  skies  utterly  unfamiliar  to 

b.  1841.  ,  ,       J 

readers  in  the  older  environments. 
Miller  is  the  Sierra  minstrel,  who,  on  the  basis  of 
a  natural  aptitude  fortified  by  an  enthusiastic 
study  of  Byron  and  Swinburne,  easily  sings  of  the 
romantic  experiences  of  a  rich  terra  incognita, 
where  the  dash  and  fire  of  personal  life  stand 
forth  against  the  background  of  snowy  mountain, 
— "  lonely  as  God  and  white  as  a  winter  moon,"- 
darksome  gulch,  or  tropical  river.  His  poems, 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American    Verse.     233 

however,  are  but  essays  in  song,  perishable  utter 
ances  of  a  freedom  that  must  more  slowly  take 
to  itself  the  lessons  of  lasting  art. 

Another  phase  of  nineteenth-century  verse  in 
America,  as  marked  and  as  characteristic  as  sen- 
timentalism,  the  natural  lyrical  outburst,  or  the 
local  idyl  or  romance,  has  been  the  poetry  of 
thought  and  culture  produced  by  men 

J  f        r  j  u    1  Poetry  of 

and  women  of  a  fame  and  power  below  Thought 
Emerson's,  who  still  have  shared  the 
influence  of  the  various  upward  movements  of  the 
time.  Thoreau,  Jones  Very,  the  younger  Ellery 
Channing,  John  S.  Dwight,  Cranch,  and  Mrs. 
Hooper  show  how  the  broad  Transcendental 
revival  of  1840  affected  minor  verse  of  many 
tones, — now  in  the  direction  of  religious  or  philo 
sophic  meditation,  now  in  that  of  concise  appeals 
for  courageous  activity  in  life,  and  yet  again  in 
mere  reflection  or  observation  of  nature.  The 
volumes  of  The  Dial,  with  much  that  is  simply 
quaint  or  hopelessly  eccentric,  contain  verse  of  no 
small  merit,  and  the  books  of  some  of  the  writers 
—they  were  not  "  singers  "•  —just  named  are  full 
of  what  seems,  after  all,  essays  toward  poetry 
rather  than  poetry  itself.  Jones  Very,  a  sort  of 
Unitarian  monk  and  mystic,  packed  into  many  a 
sonnet  or  meditative  hymn  rich  and  jones  Veryj 
weighty  words  of  reverence  and  conse-  I8l3-l88°- 
cration,  which  he  deemed  inspired  by  ghostly 
power  from  above,  and  which  he  wrote  in  implicit 
obedience  to  the  spiritual  voice  within.  Some  of 
these  poems  are  harmed  by  a  semi-Buddhistic 


234  American  Literature. 

Christian  Quietism,  as  though  Molinos  had  been 
incarnated  anew  in  the  Salem  streets  ;  others  dis 
play  the  serene  sure  beauty  of  church-yard  lilies. 
But  the  many  preferred,  and  justly,  a  more 
-John  obvious  and  rememberable  phrasing  of  vital 

C     11  *  ^^ 

DwigT"  truth,  such  as  Dwight  made  in  his  effective 
b.  1813.  p0em  entitled  "  Rest:" 

Sweet  is  the  pleasure 

Itself  cannot  spoil! 
Is  not  true  leisure 

One  with  true  toil? 

Thou  that  wouldst  taste  it, 

Still  do  thy  best; 
Use  it,  not  waste  it — 

Else  'tis  no  rest. 

Wouldst  behold  beauty 

Near  thee  ?   all  round  ? 
Only  hath  duty 

Such  a  sight  found. 

Rest  is  not  quitting 

The  busy  career ; 
Rest  is  the  fitting 

Of  self  to  its  sphere. 

'Tis  the  brook's  motion, 

Clear  without  strife, 
Fleeing  to  ocean 

After  its  life. 

Deeper  devotion 

Nowhere  hath  knelt; 
Fuller  emotion 

Heart  never  felt. 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American   Verse.     235 

'Tis  loving  and  serving 

The  highest  and  best! 
'Tis  onwards  !    unswerving — 

And  that  is  true  rest. 

The  gospel  of  life  and  eternity  shines  through 
these  seven  stanzas  !  Mrs.  Ellen  Sturgis  Hooper, 
like  Dwight,  displayed  to  the  Massachu-  Ellen 
setts  circle  of  readers,  in  her  brief  life,  ^JlS-i 
the  fact  that  culture  was  not  incompatible  1816-1841. 
with  directness,  earnestness,  and  reverence, — that, 
indeed,  will  must  fertilize  thought  before  thought 
can  do  its  proper  work  in  the  world.  The  anthol 
ogies  do  not  allow  us  to  forget  these  half-dozen 
lines  of  hers,  which  I  quote  because  they  exactly 
show  how  Transcendental  idealism  set  young 
Americans  at  work : 

I  slept,  and  dreamed  that  life  was  Beauty, 
I  woke,  and  found  that  life  was  Duty. 
Was  thy  dream  then  a  shadowy  lie  ? 
Toil  on,  sad  heart,  courageously  ; 
And  thou  shalt  find  thy  dream  to  be 
A  noonday  light  and  truth  to  thee. 

There  is  in  Unitarianism  a  deeply  devout  spirit, 
as  every  reader  of  Bryant,  Holmes,  Longfellow, 
and  such  hymn-writers  as  Sir  John  Bowring, 
E.  H.  Sears  and  Mrs.  Sarah  Flower  Adams  well 
knows.  The  individualism  and  insight  of  the 
Transcendental  movement  was  developing  this 
spirit  into  a  vital  connection  with  literature,  a 
connection  to  which  other  American  books  than 
those  of  Emerson  and  Thoreau  are  directly  or 


236  American  Literature. 

indirectly  indebted.  Cranch  went  straight  to  the 
Christopher  heart  of  the  whole  matter, — to  the  heart 
Cranch  °f  spiritual  perception, — in  his  oft-quoted 
b-  I8l3-  lines : 

"  Thought  is  deeper  than  all  speech, 
Feeling  deeper  than  all  thought;" 

and  when  he  immediately  added  : 

"  Souls,  to  souls  can  never  teach 
What  unto  themselves  was  taught," 

he  truly  phrased  the  essential  loneliness  of  inner 
most  experience.  But  the  success  of  Transcen 
dentalism,  notwithstanding  all  its  follies,  lay  in  the 
fact  that  in  Emerson's  words,  and  in  those  of 
some  of  his  associates,  the  "  inner  light "  of  one 
was  made  the  illumination  of  others. 

One    from    whom    much    was    expected,  in  the 
days  of    The   Dial,   was    the  younger    Channing, 

wniiam  Eiiery  nePhew  of  the  eminent  divine.  Emer- 
Channing,  jr.,  SOn  sent  some  of  young  Channing's 
verses  to  Carlyle,  who  found  them 
"worthy  indeed  of  reading";  the  poem  on 
"Death,"  in  particular,  being  "the  utterance  of  a 
valiant,  noble  heart,"  of  which,  in  rhyme  or  prose, 
Carlyle  thought  to  hear  more  in  the  future.  The 
same  crisp  critic,  in  the  letter  to  Emerson  in 
which  he  spoke  thus  kindly,  added  this  reflection  : 
"  Let  a  man  try  to  the  very  uttermost  to  speak 
what  he  means,  before  singing  is  had  recourse  to. 
Singing,  in  our  curt  English  speech,  contrived 
expressly  and  almost  exclusively  for  'dispatch  of 
business',  is  terribly  difficult."  The  history  of 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American   Verse.     237 

English  verse,  from  Chaucer  to  Tennyson,  in 
stantly  refutes  this  statement ;  the  advice,  how 
ever,  was  salutary  at  a  period  when  even  the 
Transcendentalists  were  falling  into  the  time-fault 
of  diffuseness.  Channing's  Miltonic  line 

"  If  my  bark  sinks,  'tis  to  another  sea," 

like  the  best  poetic  product  of  Emerson,  Thoreau, 
and  their  associates,  was  meritorious  because  it 
packed  more  thought  in  verse  than  prose  could 
express.  But  no  poet  of  his  time  is  more  addicted 
than  Channing  to  the  habit  of  maundering  along 
through  page  after  page  of  dull  pseudo-poetry, 
like  "  The  Wanderer"  or  ''Eliot,"  never  read  by 
most  and  instantly  forgotten  by  the  patient  few. 
Channing's  thoughts  are  sometimes  strong  and 
new,  and  they  are  never  contracted  or  tame  ;  but 
when  obscurity  and  ruggedness  are  added  to  pro 
lixity  we  refuse  to  pardon  the  result,  save  in  the 
case  of  one  great  poet  of  our  time. 

A  later  singer,  of  limited  but  valuable  achieve 
ment  retained  much  of  the  Transcendental  lordly 
view  of  thought  and  life,  and  made  . 

Edward  Row- 

verse  express   in    terse  and  remember-         land  sm, 

T   1  11  i-  r  1841-1887. 

able  words   the  proper  application    of 

ideals  to  daily  duty.     Read  once  more  E.  R.  Sill's 

six  lines  on  "  Life"  : 

"  Forenoon,  and  afternoon,  and  night, — Forenoon, 
And  afternoon,  and  night, — Forenoon,  and — what  ? 
The  empty  song  repeats  itself.     No  more  ? 
Yea,  that  is  Life  :    make  this  forenoon  sublime, 
This  afternoon  a  psalm,  this  night  a  prayer, 
And  Time  is  conquered,  and  thy  crown  is  won." 


238  American  Literature. 

The  American  poetry  of  pure  intellect  deals  not 
in  abstractions  alone,  nor  yet  does  it  assoil  pure 
thought  or  degrade  the  ideal,  when  it  "  hitches  its 
wagon  to  a  star."  Sill  was  able,  within  his 
sphere,  to  show  the  relations  between  idea  and 
act,  while  offering  an  ennobling  conception  of 
both,  in  clear  language  and  few  words — an  ability 
which  has  not  been  tiresomely  common  in  New 
England. 

Many  of  the  contributors  to  The  Dial  were 
women ;  and  one  of  its  editors  was  Margaret 
Fuller.  Among  the  Brook  Farm  group,  however, 
and  among  such  later  singers  as  Alice  and  Phcebe 
Gary,  Celia  Thaxter,  Margaret  J.  Preston,  and 
Lucy  Larcom — whatever  the  merit  of  their  pleas 
ing  verse — none  was  the  peer  of  Helen  Jackson 
("  H.  H."),  whose  name  outranked,  at  the  time  of 
her  death,  that  of  any  other  American  woman  who 
Helen  Maria  ever  claimed  the  name  of  poet.  Mrs. 
j^Son,  Jackson  had  the  characteristics  of  the 
1831-1885.  jr)jai  group  at  its  best :  deep  and  sincere  J 
thought,  uttered  for  its  own  sake  in  verse  not  I 
untinged  by  the  poetic  inspiration  and  touch.  In 
her  poems  the  influence  of  the  mind  is  felt  before 
that  of  the  heart ;  they  are  reflective  and  suggest 
ive,  sometimes  concisely  argumentative.  Certain 
phases  and  senses  of  spirit,  brain,  and  nature  lay 
long  in  the  poet's  thought,  and  at  length  found 
deliberate  and  apt  expression  in  word  and  metre. 
The  character  of  H.  H.'s  product  is  explained  by 
the  frequency  with  which  she  chose  single  words 
— often  abstract  nouns — as  titles.  It  is  medita- 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American    Verse.     239 

tive,    not    lyrical ;    it   lacks    spontaneity  and  out 
burst  ;    the  utter  joyance  of  the  poetry  of  nature 
and    humanity,    that   will    sing   itself,    is    seldom 
present,    even    when    nature    and    man    are   the 
themes.     Large  creative   impulse  is  also    absent. 
It  is  therefore  poetry  that  never  rises  above  the 
second   class,  but  its  place   in   that   class  is  high. 
Emerson,  whose  aptly-titled  and  curious  anthology 
"  Parnassus"   is  chiefly  valuable  as  a  commentary 
on  his  own  mind  and  writings,  recognized  some  of 
the  work  of  H.  H.  with  a  definite  praise  which  he 
seldom  bestowed  upon  a  contemporary  American. 
The   poems    he    selected    and    lauded   were    con 
structed    on    lines   partly   parallel   with   his    own, 
though  far  enough  below.     In   them   it  would  be 
unjust  to   say  that  feeling  is  absent,  for   H.   H.'s 
!  feeling   was    true,    if    delicately    and    reservedly 
!  expressed.     In  such  a  poem  as   "  Resurgam,"  one 
of  the  longest  she  ever  wrote,  philosophic  trust 
becomes  religious   faith.      Indeed,    from  the  very 
earliest    of   her   poems,    the    rugged   blank  verse 
:  which   she  wrote   in    1865,  after  the  death  of  her 
husband  and  two  children,  her  writings  are  usually 
subjective  and  personal.      It  would  be  absurd  to 
call  merely  cold  and  intellectual  the  author  of  the 
,  strong  novel  "Ramona";  which,  with  its  precedent 
!  prose-work  "  A  Century  of  Dishonor,"  fairly  burns 
j  with  a  woman's  just   indignation   at  the  wrongs 
I  suffered  by   the   Indians.     But  the  ardor  of    her 
]  poems  is  a  quiet  glow,  it  is  not  flame.     One  may 
\  read  them  with  recognition,  it  may  be  with  satis 
faction   or  even    admiration,   but  without    enthu 
siasm. 


240  American  Literature. 

There  can  be  no  question  that  the  work  of 
Woman  in  woman  in  American  literature,  and  chiefly 
Literature.  jn  fictjon  anc[  poetry,  is  hereafter  to 

command  a  study  as  deep  as  that  bestowed  upon 
the  work  of  men ;  but  the  fruitage  of  many 
seeds  is  not  yet,  though  the  flowers  are  begin- 

Sarah  Morgan     nln^    tO    aPPear-        Th^    time    will      COme 

i>Bi§"6  ?iatt'  w^en  sucn  insight,  philosophic  obser 
vation,  and  pithiness  as  Mrs.  Piatt's  ; 
such  vital  intensity  as  Miss  Lazarus' ;  and  such 
Emma  Lazarus,  bright,  gracious  nature-chronicles  as 
1849-1887.  Miss  Edith  Thomas',— who  has 

Edith  strayed  from  the  Elizabethan  days  into 
Tholes,  ours' — wil1  be  but  preludes  to  a  chorus 
b.  1854.  triumphant,  many-voiced  and  long. 

The  effect,  upon  some  few  of  the  more  eminent 
American  poets,  of  residence  and  study  in  France, 
Germany,  or  Italy  is  sufficiently  manifest,  and  has 
elsewhere  been  discussed  in  the  pages  of  this  his 
tory.  The  national  verse-product,  however,  has 
been  little  effected  by  Continental  influences,  so 
The  European  ^ar  as  tne  most  of  our  greater  singers 
impact.  are  concernecit  The  European  impact 

upon  the  poems  of  Bryant  (notwithstanding  his 
translations),  Holmes,  Whittier,  Emerson,  Poe, 
and  Whitman  was  not  strong,  and  Longfellow 
alone  returned  from  the  Old  World  with  his  mind 
and  genius  saturated  with  the  wine  of  mediaeval 
romance  and  modern  Continental  literature.  The 
prose-works  of  our  many  literary  diplomats  have 
shown  a  more  potent  effect  of  foreign  study  than 
is  visible  in  the  writings  of  the  poets  who  have 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American    Verse.     241 

trodden  the  ancient  fields.  In  some  few  cases, 
however,  the  arts  of  the  painter  and  the  poet 
have  been  joined  in  the  same  person,  as  in  Alls- 
I  ton,  Cranch,  and  Read  ;  as  those  of  the  sculptor 
•  and  poet  have  been  displayed  by  Story.  For 
such  men  an  Italian  residence  has  been  almost  a 
necessity,  and  thus,  in  the  nineteenth  century, 
American  literature  has  been  in  some  slight  way 
affected  by  that  land  which  so  mightily  taught 
England  after  the  Norman  conquest  had  opened 
the  doors  of  the  Continent  to  the  singers  and 
scholars  of  our  mother-tongue.  Story,  a  Har 
vard  graduate,  son  and  biographer  of  the  eminent 
commentator  on  the  Constitution,  wmiam  Wetmore 
began  his  career  as  a  lawyer,  but  Story» b-  l8l9- 
soon  turned  to  sculpture  and  song,  and  became 
a  permanent  resident  of  Italy.  His  dramatic 
studies,  of  which  "  A  Roman  Lawyer  in  Jeru 
salem,"  "A  Jewish  Rabbi  in  Rome,"  and  the 
repulsively  strong  "Cleopatra"  are  the  chief, 
display  a  philosophic  strength  or  a  passionate  fire 
rare  indeed  in  a  division  of  literature  to  which 
other  Americans  have  made  but  feeble  additions. 
Method  and  result  occasionally  suggest  Brown 
ing,  but  only  because  the  scenes  and  the  historic 
thought  of  Italy  seem  naturally  to  have  affected 
two  minds  in  somewhat  similar  ways.  A  few 
of  Story's  delicate  and  muse-born  lyrics,  such  as 
"  In  the  Moonlight,"  "  In  the  Rain,"  "  Love  and 
Death,"  and  "In  the  Garden,"  are  of  the  poet's 
own  land — not  merely  Italy's,  but  Ariel's  and 
Endymion's.  Yet,  notwithstanding  the  manlier 

16 


242  American  Literature. 

tone  of  "  lo  Victis"  (the  thought  of  which 
Holmes  better  sang  in  "  The  Voiceless "),  and 
"  After  Many  Days/'  Story's  sweetly  verbose 
melancholy  becomes  monotonous,  as  in  all  other 
followers  of  Heine  save  Longfellow.  "  Sunrise  " 
and  "  Moonrise "  are  longer  poems  that  seem 
based  upon  Shelley,  but  result  in  a  sort  of  com 
bination  of  Whitman  and  Sidney  Lanier.  His 
books  of  verse,  as  a  whole,  present  no  more 
than  suggestive  or  pleasing  material,  not  wrought 
into  a  true  and  lasting  result. 

A  somewhat  fuller  and  more  symmetrical 
though  equally  limited  poetic  success  is  that  of 
Dr.  Parsons,  who  was  born  in  the  same  year  with 
Thomas  wmiam  Story  and  Lowell,  and  who,  in  his 
Parsons,  b.  1819.  iife.task  of  Dante-translation,  has 

turned  again  and  again  toward  the  sunny  land  in 
which  his  brother-poet  lives.  Parsons'  place 
among  American  poets  has  always  been  peculiar  ; 
he  has  been  ignored  by  the  many  but  prized  by  a 
little  public  composed  for  the  most  part  of  those 
who  are  themselves  poets.  The  plain  brown-cov 
ered  book  of  his  "Poems"  (1854),  worn  and 
shabby  now,  is  often  found  in  hands  that  have 
themselves  written  verse  as  praiseworthy  as  that 
of  its  author.  In  its  best  page,  that  containing 
the  lines  "  On  a  Bust  of  Dante,"  he  exclaims  : 

"  O  Time  !  whose  verdicts  mock  our  own, 
The  only  righteous  judge  art  thou." 

This  judge,  in  a  generation,  has  not  established 
Dr.  Parsons'  reputation  on  any  other  basis  than 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American   Verse.     243 

that  on  which  may  stand  a  minor  poet  of  thought 
and  grace ;  nor  will  Parsons  sing  for  a  larger 
future.  To-day  his  books  hold  forth  some  few 
finely-wrought  verses,  enriched  by  culture, 
adorned  by  the  touch  of  beauty,  and  occasionally 
illumined  by  the  light  of  the  land  of  Dante's 
vision,  described  by  Dr.  Parsons  in  his  "  Para- 
disi  Gloria  "  : 

"  There  is  a  city  builded  by  no  hand, 

And  unapproachable  by  sea  or  shore, 
And  unassailable  by  any  band 
Of  storming  soldiery  forevermore." 

The  latest  Italian  influence  upon  American 
verse  is  to  be  found  in  the  work  of  Gilder,  col 
lected  in  three  volumes  :  "  The  New  Day,"  "  The 
Celestial  Passion,"  and  "Lyrics."  The  title  of 
the  first  at  once  suggests  that  of  Richard  Watson 
Dante's  "  New  Life,"— noblest  and  Gilder' b-  l844- 
most  beautiful  of  all  the  contributions  ever  made 
by  Love  to  literature.  In  form  and  spirit,  as  well 
as  in  name,  Gilder  shows  how  reverently  and 
sympathetically  he  has  studied  the  prose  and 
verse  of  that  artistic  and  picturesque  old  band  of 
singers  whom  Rossetti  grouped  as  "  Dante  and 
his  Circle."  Sincerity,  conscientious  and  un 
worldly  art,  a  devotion  half-religious  toward  the 
soul  of  an  earthly  love,  and  an  attitude  of  rapt 
and  almost  pietistic  devoutness  toward  the  maker 
of  that  physical  world  whose  riddle  is  transfigured 
and  so  made  plain  by  unworldly  affection — these 
were  the  qualities  of  the  mighty,  sad,  and  yet 


244  American  Literature. 

serenely  happy  Florentine ;  and  these  are  the 
things  that  his  followers  in  every  age  would  show. 
The  self-respecting  and  unswerving  loyalty  of  this 
young  singer  toward  his  verbal  art,  and  toward 
the  spirit  that  shapes  his  song,  is  praiseworthy. 
He  is  in  some  ways  a  poet  of  his  city  and  his 
time ;  but  more  than  either,  to  him,  are  the  long 
verities  of  his  craft.  His  sincerity  not  unseldom 
shapes  itself  in  a  worthy  utterance  ;  some  of  his 
sonnets  have  a  fit  body  for  an  inspiring  thought ; 
and  an  occasional  blank-verse  fragment  such  as 
the  poem  entitled  "  Recognition,"  or  a  terse  lyric 
worthy  of  being  read  by  Landor,  approves  the 
maker's  art.  Aim  and  plan,  however,  as  yet  out 
run  achievement  in  Gilder's  books,  which  are  not 
free  from  excrescences,  fettered  imitations,  fail 
ures  to  reach  the  sought  result,  or  grotesque 
juvenilities  like  two  much-laughed-at  sonnets  in 
"  The  New  Day."  "  Follow,  follow,"  is  still  the 
word  of  his  muse  ;  and  there  is  no  unwillingness 
in  the  mind  thus  bidden. 

The  later  and  living  poets  of  America,  as  the 

nineteenth  century  draws  to  a  close,  hardly  find 

themselves    in    the    position   occupied  by 

American  . 

poetry  their  predecessors,  forty  years  ago. 
"  The  stories  have  all  been  told,"  says  a 
realistic  critic  of  fiction  ;  we  cannot  aver  that  "  the 
songs  have  all  been  sung,"  but  it  is  certain  that 
the  first  national  outburst  has  not  been  followed 
by  a  second  as  great.  It  could  not  be,  for  the 
flowering  came  after  two  centuries  of  dull  and  in 
conspicuous  preparation  and  germination.  Again, 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American    Verse.     245 

in  England  itself  the  romantic  revival  of  1800  has 
long  since  spent  its  force,  and  the  later  Tennyson 
and  Browning  loom  up  lone  in  a  chorus  of  trio 
let-makers,  with  few  save  Arnold,  Swinburne,  and 
Morris  between  their  stature  and  that  of  the 
little  crowd.  The  tides  of  literature,  and  espe 
cially  of  poetry,  rise  and  fall  though  time  goes  on  ; 
progress  and  readjustment  will  sooner  or  later  fill 
the  places  of  Emerson,  Longfellow,  and  Poe. 
Meanwhile  many  a  noble  note  is  struck  half  un 
heard,  in  the  maturer  history  of  American  verse, 
which  would  have  sounded  clear  and  fine  in  the 
early  poverty-stricken  days  when  everybody  who 
could  manufacture  a  couplet, — pious,  patriotic, 
or  sentimental, — was  forthwith  deemed  a  poet. 
There  was  no  more  than  one  American  writer, 
before  Bryant,  who  could  have  conceived  or  ex 
pressed  in  a  dozen  pages,  such  thoughts,  for 
instance,  as  Henry  Abbey  puts  into  two  lines 
like  these  : 

"  Read  the  round  sky's  star-lettered  page,  or  grope 
In  the  abysses  of  the  microscope  ;  "  * 

nor  could  the  combined  talent  of  the  whole  com 
pany  of  our  imaginative  writers  before  Drake 
(always  excepting  Freneau)  have  produced  a 
poem  so  good  as  the  same  author's  "  Irak"  ;  yet 
Abbey  is  a  comparatively  obscure  poet.  One  of 
ten  thousand  massed  flowers  is  less  distinguisha- 

*  "  Science  and  the  Soul." 


246  American  Literature. 

ble  than  a  single  weed  blossom  here  and  there. 
But  broad  prodigality  will  sometime  produce  a 
Milton  or  at  least  a  Keats  : 

"  Come  hither,  Muse,  rest  on  our  Western  shore  ; 

The  sea  is  narrow,  and  the  time  is  come. 

Heart,  home  and  freedom,  and  thine  English  tongue 

Have  builded  here.     Thou  shalt  have  room  and  love. 

What  shady  nook,  what  sunlit  stream  is  yon, 

But  we  here  sunnier,  shadier  ?     Younger  lands, 

And  greener  woods  and  songs  of  peace  are  here."  t 

I  have  been  considering  some  names  of  living 
singers,  but  as  connected  with  tendencies  the 
force  of  which  is  for  the  most  part  spent.  Now 
that  I  turn  to  the  immediately  present  names  of 
the  second  poetic  period,  I  cannot  refrain  from 
putting  at  the  head  of  the  list  the  name  of  Bayard 
Bayard  Taylor,  Taylor,  though  he  went  hence  now 
a  decade  ago.  The  dissipating  and 
almost  destroying  tendencies  of  modern  intel-  , 
lectual  life,  especially  in  new  and  multifarious  / 
America,  seemed  almost  cruel  in  the  case  of  that 
adventurous  traveller,  attractive  Pennsylvania 
novelist,  entertaining  lecturer,  well-equipped  critic, 
wholesome  wit,  industrious  journalist,  and  manly 
man,  who  ever  loved  poetry  most  of  all,  and  who, 
save  Holmes,  was  at  once  the  most  natural  and 
the  most  accomplished  American  master  of  the 
purely  lyrical  art  since  Poe.  The  melodies  of  the 

An  Invocation,"  by  William  Hayes  Ward,  D.D. 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American   Verse.     247 

infinite  song  rang  in  his  ear,  and  he  almost  caught 
and  reproduced  in  verse  some  high  strains  of  the 
universe  of  matter  and  of  man.  But 

"  Now  I  hear  it  not : — I  loiter 

Gayly  as  before  ; 
Yet  I  sometimes  think, — and  thinking 

Makes  my  heart  so  sore, — 

Just  a  few  steps  more, 
And  there  might  have  shone  for  me, 
Blue  and  infinite,  the  sea." 

From  his  quiet  and  opulent  Chester  County  in 
Pennsylvania  to  Europe  in  the  east,  to  California 
in  the  west,  to  frozen  Iceland  in  the  far  north, 
and  to  torrid  ancient  Egypt  in  the  sun-drenched 
continent  of  the  south,  Taylor  travelled  with  the 
poet's  wander-staff ;  and  from  nearly  every  field 
he  brought  back  some  ballad  or  other  lyric,  some 
dramatic  sketch  or  Parnassian  thought.  A  few  of 
these  he  modestly  called  "  Rhymes  of  Travel" — 
it  was  at  least  well  to  show  that  America  had  at 
length  become  rich  enough  to  call  true  poems 
"  rhymes,"  having  begun  by  declaring  rhymes  to 
be  poems.  The  classical  influence  and  spirit, 
also,  were  not  wanting  in  a  singer,  who,  like 
Keats,  had  lacked  the  mellowing  influences  of 
collegiate  life.  And  what  other  English-speaking 
poet  has  so  reproduced  the  very  atmosphere  of  \ 
the  Orient  as  did  this  writer  of  the  lovely  "  Bed 
ouin  Song,"  this  "  Western  Asiatic,"  as  his  friend 
and  loyal  critic  Stedman  aptly  calls  him  ?  The 
Yankee  Unitarian  Emerson,  from  Massachusetts, 
and  the  Quaker  Taylor  from  Pennsylvania, 


248  American  Literature. 

stretched  forth  their  hands  to  the  realms  of  "The 
Lord's  Lay"  and  "The  Arabian  Nights,"  But 
Taylor  was  not  the  less  American ;  he  wrote 
"  Poems  of  Home  and  Travel,"  and  "  The  Quaker 
Widow"  is  purely  of  his  own  soil  and  time. 
Nearer  still  to  his  own  heart  and  experiences  are 
parts  of  "The  Poet's  Journal "  —which,  in  its 
externals,  proffers  hexameters  almost  as  good  as 
Longfellow's. 

I  would  call  Taylor's  last  years  a  period  of 
poetic  decline,  were  it  not  for  its  two  brilliant 
successes.  When  I  think  of  "  The  Picture  of 
St.  John,"  "Lars;  a  Pastoral  of  Norway/'  "The 
Prophet ;  a  Tragedy,"  "  Home  Pastorals,  Ballads, 
and  Lyrics,"  the  resonant  but  imperfectly  success 
ful  Ode  for  the  national  centennial  in  1876,  and 
"Prince  Deukalion ;  a  Lyrical  Drama,"  there 
comes  to  mind  the  memory  of  scattered  successes 
and  an  irregular  conglomerate  failure.  Seldom 
does  achievement  lag  so  far  behind  desire  as  in 
the  case  of  the  "  Deukalion."  Taylor  sought  to 
make  it  a  poem  fitly  chronicling  the  entire  upward 
and  onward  march  of  man,  but  overwork  and 
failing  powers  are  sadly  manifest. 

Yet,  after  all,  neither  vain  excuse  nor  word  of 
deep  disappointment  need  embitter  our  memories 
of  one  who  produced  (albeit  in  three  years)  a  met 
rical  version  of  Faust  that  for  practical  purposes 
is  faultless,  and  who  wrote  (in  four  days)  "  The 
Masque  of  the  Gods,"  our  best  addition  to  the 
loftiest  or  religious  division  of  the  drama,  the 
highest  form  of  literature. 


Tones  and   Tendencies  of  American    Verse.     249 

To  George  H.  Boker,  Taylor's  friend,  editor, 
and  fellow-Pennsylvanian,  also  belongs  George  Henry 
one  of  the  infrequent  American  sue-  Boker> b- 1823- 
cesses  in  the  department  of  the  drama.  As  Tay 
lor  attained,  in  "  The  Masque  of  the  Gods,"  a 
serene  height  of  religious  expression  which  Long 
fellow  usually  missed  in  his  similar  efforts,  so 
Boker,  with  much  of  Longfellow's  bookishness, 
added  to  some  of  his  dramas  a  playwright's  skill. 
When  I  read  Boker's  "  Francesca  da  Rimini "  and 
"  Calaynos,"  in  my  college  days,  their  atmosphere 
impressed  me  quite  as  strongly  as  their  words  and 
deeds  ;  the  student  of  Italian  life,  yet  most  influ 
enced  by  the  mighty  plays  of  the  period  of 
Shakespeare  and  his  fellows,  brought  to  his  page 
the  far  unworldly  charm  which  belongs  to  letters 
and  the  library  lamp.  But  in  later  years  an  emi 
nent  American  actor  found  in  the  first  named  of 
these  plays  the  acting-quality  as  well  as  the  closet- 
beauty.  In  the  desert  of  the  American  drama 
the  work  of  Boker,  then,  is  doubly  welcome.  It 
is  not  "  indigenous "  or  new  or  indispensable; 
it  merely  offers  somewhat  of  the  strength  of  word, 
the  flame  of  color,  the  intensity  of  act,  of  the  ear 
lier  or  later  English  makers  of  plays,  to  whom 
the  bloody  pages  of  mediaeval  history  have 
been  so  rich  an  inspiration.  That  verbal  grace 
which  must  be  added  to  sincere  sentiment,  if  a 
good  lyric  is  to  be  made,  is  a  mark  of  some  of 
Boker's  songs,  such  as  the  "  Dragoon's  Song,"  the 
"  Lancer's  Song,"  or  the  "  Dirge  for  a  Sailor," 
beginning  : 


250  American  Literature. 

Slow,  slow !   toll  it  low, 

As  the  sea-waves  break  and  flow, 
With  the  same  dull,  slumberous  motion 
As  his  ancient  mother,  Ocean, 

Rocked  him  on  through  storm  and  calm, 

From  the  iceberg  to  the  palm  : 

So  his  drowsy  ears  may  deem 

That  the  sound  which  wakes  his  dream 

Is  the  ever-moaning  tide, 

Washing  on  his  vessel's  side. 

Others  of  his  lyrics  are  hurried  and  imperfect, 
with  weak  words  and  forced  rhymes.  But  as  we 
look  back  upon  the  past  half-century  of  American 
verse  his  dramatic  work,  though  not  of  the  great 
est,  stands  out  the  more  clearly.  We  have  pro 
duced  dozens  of  song-makers,  but  seldom  a  dra 
matic  author,  and  only  two  writers  of  acting  plays 
which  are  also  pieces  of  literature:  Payne  ("  Bru 
tus  ")  and  Boker. 

The  third  singer  in  the  trio  of  poets  which 
included  Taylor  and  Boker  was  R.  H.  Stoddard  ; 
Richard  the  three  were  united  in  bonds  of  per- 
^toddard,  sonal  friendship  and  literary  enthusiasm 
b.  1825.  as  £rm  as  those  which  for  a  lifetime  joined 
Lowell  the  poet,  William  Page  the  painter,  and 
Charles  F.  Briggs  the  litterateur.  Boker's  liter 
ary  life  has  always  been  connected  with  Philadel 
phia — once  our  greatest  city  and  literary  as  well 
as  political  capital,  but  more  distinguished  of  late 
for  culture  than  creation.  Stoddard,  Massachu 
setts-born,  has  long  been  a  leading  member  of 
that  "  New  York  group "  which  once,  notwith 
standing  the  renown  of  Irving,  Bryant,  and  Poe, 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American   Verse.     251 

was  less  conspicuous  than  the  Boston  and  Cam 
bridge  and  Concord  coteries,  but  which,  in  these 
latter  days,  is  drawing  to  itself  a  large  part  of  the 
genius  of  the  land.  New  York  is  old  enough,  and 
widely-rich  enough,  to  proffer  many  of  the  advan 
tages  and  distractions  of  a  book  and  periodical 
centre  like  London  or  Paris ;  and  Stoddard, 
therein,  has  been  a  man  of  letters  from  the  first. 
His  extensive  acquaintance  with  English  verse, 
equalled  only  by  Stedman's,  and  his  artistic  taste 
and  fearlessness  of  speech,  have  been  long 
devoted  to  that  anonymous  literary  criticism 
which  he  has  contributed  to  the  omnivorous  and 
short-memoried  periodical  press,  and  to  his 
acknowledged  editorial  work  upon  anthologies, 
collections  of  prose  essays  or  ana,  and  editions 
of  standard  authors.  But  his  heart  of  hearts  and 
song  of  songs  are  the  poet's ;  to  his  Arcady, 
Arabia,  and  Ind  no  breath  of  custom-house,  city 
library,  or  newspaper  office  has  ever  come.  I  do 
not  mean  to  say  that  he  has  not  been  tempted  at 
times,  by  the  calls  that  so  frequently  beset  the 
metropolitan  man-of-letters,  to  swift  improvisa 
tions,  extravaganzas,  or  medleys  in  verse,  de 
signed  to  fit  a  temporary  wish  or  demand.  The 
gap  between  his  best  and  worst  is  sadly  wide. 
But  his  five  hundred  pages  of  collected  poems  are 
full-freighted  with  the  opima  spolia  of  observation, 
reflection,  fancy,  imagination.  Let  him  who  fears 
that  American  materialism  can  silence  the  chant  of 
the  soul  and  the  carol  of  nature  turn  to  Stoddard 
and  find  sufficient  answer  in  him  alone.  Though 


252  American  Literature. 

"We  have  two  lives  about  us, 

Two  worlds  in  which  we  dwell, 

Within  us,  and  without  us, 
Alternate  Heaven  and  Hell, 

Without  the  sombre  Real, 

Within  our  heart  of  hearts  the  beautiful  Ideal," 

yet  the  poet's 

"  Castle  stands  alone, 
In  some  delicious  clime, 
Away  from  Earth  and  Time, 

In  Fancy's  tropic  zone, 
Beneath  its  summer  skies, 
Where    all   the   life-long   year   the    Summer 
never  dies." 

I  remember,  as  of  yesterday,  the  fresh  open-air 
delight,  the  seeming  presence  of  bird,  breeze,  and 
flower,  with  which  in  boyhood  I  read  Stoddard's 
"  Songs  of  Summer";  and  as  I  return  to  them  I 
find  indeed  that  their  season  "  never  dies,"  for  it 
is  the  eternal  summer  of  song.  In  the  proem  to 
the  collected  edition  the  poet  tells  us  that 

"  These  songs  of  mine,  the  best  that  I  have  sung, 
Are  not  my  best,  for  caged  within  the  lines 
Are  thousands  better  (if  they  would  but  sing!)." 

So  it  is  in  all  literature,  for  so  it  is  in  a  life  the 
whole  secret  of  which  is  long  development  from 
the  imperfect  and  the  confined.  There  is  a  place 
for  poets  below — far  below — Sophocles,  Horace, 
Dante,  Shakespeare ;  for  we  know  not  when  the 
sphere-song  or  the  nature-word  will  come  from 
such  lyrics  as  these.  Whether  they  live  in  litera- 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American   Verse.     253 

ture  is  unimportant,  for  every  message  of  the 
ideal  is  welcome  to  some  one,  in  whose  true  life 
it  can  never  be  lost.  Stoddard  is  to  be  recognized 
in  the  muses'  court  not  only  because  he  is  one  of 
the  few  Americans  who  can  write  blank  verse  (it 
is  natural  that  he  hails  Bryant  as  our  chief  bard)  ; 
not  because  the  mysteries  of  the  sonnet  and  the 
ode  are  open  to  him,  but  chiefly  for  the  sponta 
neous  and  imaginative  music  which  is  ubique  gen 
tium  the  best  credential  of  the  poet,  whether  he 
write  epics  or  the  shortest  Elizabethan  madrigal 
or  Scotch  love-song.  I  cannot  follow  Stoddard  in 
his  evident  preference  for  his  songs  on  Asian 
themes ;  nor  can  I  praise  the  too  numerous  pessi 
mistic  and  aging  strains  betokening  overmuch  a 
sense  of  life's  weariness  and  uncertain  skies.  Let 
his  best  and  brightest  self  sing  down  in  a  lyric,  or 
weigh  down  with  some  strong  line  from  sonnet  or 
ode,  such  anacreontic  memories,  such  cis-Atlantic 
echoes  or  sympathetic  answers  of  Heine, — whose 
influence  in  the  world  I  am  almost  ready  to 
declare  mischievous.  The  credo  of  this  poet  and 
of  all  poets  is  found  in  the  best  work  Stoddard 
has  yet  produced,  his  "  Hymn  to  the  Beautiful." 
It  is  conspicuously  influenced  by  Wordsworth's 
great  ode  ;  it  reminds  us  now  of  Shelley,  now  of 
Keats  ;  its  two  first  divisions  are  weak  ;  nor,  of 
course,  is  it  novel  in  its  deep  fundamental  devout 
idea,  underlying:  many  poems  and 

,   .  1         11        1  The  Soul  of 

uttered  in  many  words  all  adown  the    poetry: "Hymn 

line  of  the  centuries.     The  idea  is  the  t 

very  soul  of  art :  the  thing  of  beauty  that  is  a  joy 


254  American  Literature. 

forever ;  the  truth  that  is  beauty  and  the  beauty 
that  is  truth ;  the  beauty  that  is  its  own  excuse 
for  being.  Never  can  singer  attempt  to  phrase  a 
deeper  thought  than  this  :* 

My  heart  is  full  of  tenderness  and  tears, 
And  tears  are  in  my  eyes,  I  know  not  why, 

With  all  my  grief  content  to  live  for  years, 
Or  even  this  hour  to  die. 

My  youth  is  gone,  but  that  I  heed  not  now, 
My  love  is  dead,  or  worse  than  dead  can  be, 

My  friends  drop  off,  like  blossoms  from  a  bough, 
But  nothing  troubles  me, — 

Only  the  golden  flush  of  sunset  lies 

Within  my  heart  like  fire,  like  dew  within  my  eyes. 

Spirit  of  Beauty !   whatsoe'er  thou  art, 
I  see  thy  skirt  afar,  and  feel  thy  power; 
It  is  thy  presence  fills  this  charmed  hour, 

And  fills  my  charmed  heart : 
Nor  mine  alone,  but  myriads  feel  thee  now, 
That  know  not  what  they  feel,  nor  why  they  bow. 

Thou  canst  not  be  forgot, 
For  all  men  worship  thee,  and  know  it  not ; 
Nor  men  alone,  but  babes  with  wondrous  eyes, 

New-comers  from  the  skies. 
We  hold  the  keys  of  Heaven  within  our  hands, 
The  heirloom  of  a  higher,  happier  state, 
And  lie  in  infancy  at  Heaven's  gate, 
Transfigured  in  the  light  that  streams  along  the  lands. 
Around  our  pillows  golden  ladders  rise, 
And  up  and  down  the  skies, 
With  winged  sandals  shod, 


*  With  the  exception  of  one  obvious  misprint,  I  have  followed,  as  in  duty 
bound,  the  author's  revised  text  of  1880,  though  not  deeming  it  in  all  re 
spects  an  improvement  upon  that  given  in  the  1852  volume  of  "  Poems." 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American   Verse.     255 

The  angels  come  and  go,  the  Messengers  of  God ! 
Nor,  though  they  fade  from  us,  do  they  depart — 

It  is  the  childly  heart: 

We  walk  as  heretofore, 

Adown  their  shining  ranks,  but  see  them  nevermore. 
Heaven  is  not  gone,  but  we  are  blind  with  tears, 
Groping  our  way  along  the  downward  slope  of  years  ! 

From  earliest  infancy  my  heart  was  thine, 

With  childish  feet  I  trod  thy  temple  aisles; 

Not  knowing  tears,  I  worshipped  thee  with  smiles, 
Or  if  I  wept  it  was  with  joy  divine. 
By  day,  and  night,  on  land,  and  sea,  and  air, 

I  saw  thee  everywhere. 
A  voice  of  greeting  from  the  wind  was  sent, 

The  mists  enfolded  me  with  soft  white  arms, 
The  birds  did  sing  to  lap  me  in  content, 

The  rivers  wove  their  charms, 
And  every  little  daisy  in  the  grass 
Did  look  up  in  my  face,  and  smile  to  see  me  pass. 
Not  long  can  Nature  satisfy  the  mind, 

Nor  outward  fancies  feed  its  inner  flame  ; 

We  feel  a  growing  want  we  cannot  name, 
And  long  for  something  sweet,  but  undefined. 
The  wants  of  Beauty  other  wants  create, 
Which  overflow  on  others,  soon  or  late ; 
For  all  that  worship  thee  must  ease  the  heart, 

By  Love,  or  Song,  or  Art. 
Divinest  Melancholy  walks  with  thee, 
And  Music  with  her  sister  Poesy; 
But  on  thy  breast  Love  lies,  immortal  child, 
Begot  of  thine  own  longings,  deep  and  wild ; 
The  more  we  worship  him  the  more  we  grow 
Into  thy  perfect  image  here  below ; 
For  here  below,  as  in  the  spheres  above, 
All  Love  is  Beauty,  and  all   Beauty — Love  ! 
Not  from  the  things  around  us  do  we  draw 

The  love  within,  within  the  love  is  born, 

Remembered  light  of  some  forgotten  morn, 


256  American  Literature. 

Recovered  canons  of  eternal  law. 

The  painter's  picture,  the  rapt  poet's  song, 
The  sculptor's  statue,  never  saw  the  Day — 
Were  never  in  colors,  sounds,  or  shapes  of  clay, 

Whose  crowning  work  still  does  its  spirit  wrong. 

Hue   after  hue  divinest  pictures  grow, 
Line   after  line  immortal  songs   arise, 

And  limb  by  limb,   out-starting  stern  and  slow, 
The  statue  wakes  with  wonder  in  its  eyes  : 

And  in  the  Master's  mind 

Sound  after  sound  is  born,   and  dies   like  wind, 
That  "echoes  through  a  range  of  ocean  caves, 

And  straight  is  gone  to  weave  its  spell  upon  the  waves. 
The  mystery  is  thine, 

For  thine  the  more  mysterious  human  heart, 

The  Temple  of  all  wisdom,  Beauty's  shrine, 
The  Oracle  of  Art! 

Earth  is  thine  outer  court,  and  Life  a  breath. 

Why  should  we  fear  to  die,  and  leave  the  Earth  ? 

Not  thine  alone  the  lesser  key  of  Birth, 

But  all  the  keys  of  Death. 
And  all   the  worlds,  with  all  that  they  contain 

Of  Life,  and  Death,  and  Time,  are  thine  alone; 
The  Universe  is  girdled  with  a  chain, 
And  hung  below  the  Throne 
Where  Thou  dost  sit,  the  Universe  to  bless, 
Thou  sovereign  Smile  of  God,    Eternal  Loveliness! 

On  this  ever-recurrent  theme  none  is  more 
worthy  to  speak  than  a  poet  who  has  surveyed  the 
entire  field  of  contemporary  English  and  Ameri 
can  verse,  noting  wherein  it  has  followed  or 
Edmund  Clarence  spurned  the  eternal  canons.  Sted- 
stedman,b.  1833.  man's  related  volumes,  "Victorian 
Poets"  and  "  Poets  of  America,"  are  from  the  pen 
of  a  man  who  has  elsewhere  told  us  that  "  crit- 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American    Verse.     257 

icism  is  the  art  and  practice  of  declaring  in  what 
degree  any  word,  character,  or  action  conforms  to 
the  Right ;  "  and  that  "  the  consensus  of  the  fine 
arts  ....  is  such  that,  while  each  has  inexorable 
limits,  they  all  move  in  harmony,  and  subject 
to  the  same  enduring  principles."  The  value  of 
these  critical  surveys  depends  even  more  upon 
their  author's  perception  and  delicately-clear  but 
never  impertinent  statement  of  this  broad  prin 
ciple  than  upon  his  extended  and  indefatigable 
studies  and  his  felicity  of  expression.*  He  un 
derstands  the  harmony  of  the  arts — all  of  them, 
whether  spoken  or  written  language,  dramatic 
action,  painting,  sculpture,  architecture,  music, 
mere  means  of  intellectual  and  spiritual  presenta 
tion  from  mind  to  mind — and  in  himself  refutes 
all  idea  of  the  essential  severance  of  the  critical 
function  from  the  creative,  because  he  makes  crit 
icism  creation.  Naturally  we  find  his  poetry  to 
be  that  of  one  who  sings  because  he  must,  yet 
with  devotion  to  the  austere  principles  of  an  art 
that  held  Shakespeare  and  Dante  in  bonds  that 
none  were  less  desirous  than  they  to  spurn.  Art 
without  soul  is  worthless  ;  soul  without  form  is 

*  The  student  of  American  poetry  must  turn  with  constant  obligation  to 
the  critical  aid  furnished  by  Mr.  Stedman's  volume  thereon — the  first  ade 
quate  study  of  an  important  division  of  verse.  In  that  volume  one  recog 
nizes  Mr.  Stedman's  breadth  and  depth  of  catholic  learning,  as  well  as  the 
illuminating  power  of  discriminating  utterance  possessed  by  a  poet  who 
constantly  shows  how  nearly  related  are  the  criticism  of  art  and  the  creation 
of  art.  To  him  all  friends  of  American  letters  must  constantly  remain  in 
debt ; — nor  would  I  attempt  to  lead  my  readers  through  the  same  paths 
were  it  not  made  necessary  by  the  general  plan  of  my  history,  undertaken 
years  before  the  publication  of  "  Poets  of  America,"  and  based,  of  course, 
upon  ideas  often  different  from  those  of  my  predecessor. 


258  American  Literature. 

voiceless;  Stedman's  poetry — described  uncon 
sciously  in  his  own  words  concerning  another — is 
that  of 

the  brave  soul 
Which,  touched  with  fire,  dwells  not  on  whatsoever 

Its  outer  senses  hold  in  their  intent, 
But,  sleepless  even  in  sleep,  must  gather  toll 
Of  dreams  which  pass  like  barks  upon  the  river 

And  make  each  vision  Beauty's  instrument ; 
That  from  its  own  love  Love's  delight  can  tell, 

And  from  its  own  grief  guess  the  shrouded  Sorrow  ; 
From  its  own  joyousness  of  Joy  can  sing ; 

That   can  predict  so  well 
From  its  own  dawn  the  lustre  of  to-morrow, 

The  whole  flight  from  the  flutter  of  the  wing.* 

This  is  the  soul  not  only  of  the  life-romancer 
but  of  every  true  lyrist  and  idyllist.  The  choice 
(and  now  very  rare)  London  collection  of  Sted- 
A  lyrist  and  man's  best  poems  written  prior  to  1879 
is  fitly  entitled  "  Lyrics  and  Idyls,  with 
other  Poems."  Their  author  is  pre-eminently  a 
lyrist  (as  he  early  indicated  in  his  "  Poems,  Lyric 
and  Idyllic  "),  not  many  notes  of  whose  Pan-song 
have  been  lost  in  his  banker-life  in  the  metropo 
lis,  for  the  great  pavemented  city,  with  its  over 
shadowing  masses  of  brick  and  stone,  has  never 
been  able  to  banish  the  idyllic  from  his  thought 
and  verse.  The  ready  pen  of  the  journalist  sug 
gested,  in  his  young  manhood,  that  brilliant  but 
forgotten  social  satire  "  The  Diamond  Wedding," 
and  perhaps  the  more  enduring  ante-war  ballad, 
"  How  Old  Brown  took  Harper's  Ferry."  But 

*  Stedman's  "Hawthorne  and  other  Poems,''  pp.  15,  16. 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American   Verse.     259 

"  Alice  of  Monmouth,"  published  in  the  dark 
year  1864,  was  rightly  called  in  its  sub-title, 
"  An  Idyl  of  the  Great  War."  Its  battle  pictures 
have  a  vividness  that  Whitman's  verse  or  prose 
is  powerless  to  rival  : 

Friends  and  foes, — who  could  discover  which, 

As  they  marked  the  zigzag,  outer  ditch, 

Or  lay  so  cold  and  still  in  the  bush, 

Fallen  and  trampled  down  in  the  last  wild  rush  ? 

Then  the  shattered  forest-trees;  the  clearing  there 

Where  a  battery  stood ;  dead  horses,  pawing  the  air 

With  horrible  upright  hoofs ;  a  mangled  mass 

Of  wounded  and  stifled  men  in  the  low  morass, 

And  the  long  trench  dug  in  haste  for  a  burial-pit 

Whose  yawning  length  and  breadth  all  comers  fit. 

And  over  the  dreadful  precinct,  like  the  lights 
That  flit  through  graveyard  walks  in  dismal  nights, 
Men  with  lanterns  were  groping  among  the  dead, 
Holding  the  flame  to  every  hueless  face, 
And  bearing  those  whose  life  had  not  wholly  fled 
On    stretchers,  that  looked  like  biers,   from   the   ghastly 
place. 

But  in  other  pages  it  tells  us  how 

Softly  the  rivulet's  ripples  flow; 
Dark  is  the  grove  that  lover's  know ; 
Here,  where  the  whitest  blossoms  blow 
The  reddest  and  ripest  berries  grow; 

or  bids  us  look  upward  to  a  diffused  sky-glory  that 
is  a  celestial  omen  of  ultimate  brotherhood : 

Immeasurable,  white,  a  spotless  fire,  .  .  . 
Gleams  of  the  heavenly  city  walled  with  gold ! 


260  American  Literature. 

The  poet's  view  of  life  is  all-inclusive  ;  city  and 
country,  war  and  peace,  present  and  future,  time 
Life  and  and  eternity,  are  equal  for  the  seer  who 
the  Poet.  sings  of  flower  or  star,  life  or  death,  brook 
or  battle-field,  and  would  interpret  the  secret  of 
the  whole.  There  is  no  violent  or  unintentional 
contrast  between  the  parts  of  this  remarkable  and 
rememberable  poem,  the  metrical  wealth  of  which 
is  alone  enough  to  attract  attention  to  its  story 
and  its  pictures.  And  the  daintiness  of  the  little 
lyric  called  "  Toujours  Amour  "  ;  the  rustic  spirit 
of  "The  Doorstep";  the  grim  strength  of  "The 
Lord's  Day  Gale"  (both  of  which  Whittier  might 
have  written)  ;  the  hearthstone  affection  of  the 
lines  to  "  Laura,  my  Darling,"  are  inconsistent 
neither  with  the  sweet  mediaeval  allegorism  of 
"  The  Blameless  Prince"  nor  with  the  distinctive 
Americanism  and  vitality  of  the  swiftly-moving 
John  Brown  narrative.  The  singer  properly 
refuses  to  abstract  himself,  like  Poe,  from  half  of 
life ;  nor  can  we  wish  it  in  days  when  even  a 
Tennyson  must  perforce  turn  from  Surrey  or  the 
Isle  of  Wight  toward  the  Crimea,  or  venture  the 
solution  of  the  innermost  problems  of  British 
society. 

The  philosophy  of  Mr.  Stedman's  poetic  prod 
uct,  if  the  term  may  be  applied  without  hiding 
the  preeminent  singing  quality  of  that  product, 
and  if  I  understand  his  aim,  seems  to 

I  he  Ula 

Thought  in    He  in  his  broad  view  of  the   relations  of 

New  Times.  .  r       , 

nature    and    man    in    time,    and    of   the 
necessarily  catholic  function  of  the  poet.     He  who 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American   Verse.     261 

has  noted  the  inner  purposes  and  the  superficial 
fashions  of  the  Victorian  bards,  and  has  shown 
how  the  great  religious,  political,  and  social 
movements  from  1840  to  1865  affected  the  Amer 
ican  choir,  would  be  unlikely  to  write  verse  unin 
fluenced  by  the  same  conditions,  and  by  their 
serious  observation  on  his  own  part.  The  student 
and  translator  of  Theocritus,  the  lover  of  the 
Elizabethan  madrigals,  and  the  editor  of  that 
modern  Greek,  Landor,  he  perceives  that  the  poet 
may  enrich  his  thought  with  the  spoils  of  thirty 
centuries,  and  be  the  more,  rather  than  the  less, 
fitted  to  write  a  Yankee  love-lyric  or  a  battle-song 
of  to-day.  There  can  be  no  question  that  our 
contemporary  poets  are  readers  as  well  as  singers  ; 
Wordsworth's  private  library,  with  its  three  hun 
dred  volumes,  would  have  starved  Lowell  or  Sted- 
man.  "  Ofte  thenkyng,"  says  the  WyclifTe  version 
of  Ecclesiastes,  "is  turment  of  fleisch"  ;  and  cer 
tainly  it  is  a  torment  to  the  spontaneity  which 
should  be  a  mark  of  the  minstrel.  But  he  who 
reads  in  order  to  sing  aright  and  betimes,  may, 
like  Stedman,  find  his  theme  in  the  daily  paper, 
nor  sacrifice  one  whit  of  constant  devotion  to  the 
serenely  spiritual : 

Above  the  clouds  I  lift  my  wing 
To  hear  the  bells  of  Heaven  ring ; 
Some  of  their  music,  though  my  flights  be  wild, 
To  earth  I  bring; 
Then  let  me  soar  and  sing !  * 

*  "  The  Singer,"  in  "  Early  Poems." 


262  American  Literature. 

How  often  do  the  poets,  in  the  freshness  of 
their  youth,  utter  this  word  of  life-long  allegiance ! 
Nor  can  it  be  renounced  in  middle-life  or  age  by 
the  company  of  those  who,  in  perennial  youth,  are 
ever  "children  of  the  morrow"  —and  of  the  moun 
tain-top.  The  poet's  mind  is  to  him  a  higher 
kingdom  than  that  of  the  "  middle-earth  "  of  the 
Anglo-Saxons ;  for  though  he  lives  among  men  he 
leads  them  because  of  his  loftier  outlook.  To 
him,  in  allegory  as  well  as  in  fact,  as  to  Stedman 
in  that  one  of  his  "  Poems  of  Nature"  entitled 
"The  Mountain" 

The  proud  city  seems  a  mole 
To  this  horizon-bounded  whole; 
And,  from  my  station  on  the  mount, 
The  whole  is  little  worth  account 
Beneath  the  overhanging  sky, 
That  seems  so  far  and  yet  so  nigh. 
Here  breathe  I  inspiration  rare, 
Unburdened  by  the  grosser  air 
That  hugs  the  lower  land,  and  feel 
Through  all  my  finer  senses  steal 
The  life  of  what  that  li'fe  may  be, 
Freed  from  this  dull  earth's  density, 
When  we  with  many  a  soul-felt  thrill, 
Shall  thrid  the  ether  at  our  will, 
Through  widening  corridors  of  morn 
And  starry  archways  swiftly  borne. 

This  central  thought  of  poetry  may  easily  be 
pushed  to  affectation  or  absurdity  ;  and  in  its  too 
eager  search  we  may  profess  to  discover  "inner 
meanings  "  which  the  song  was  never  intended  to 
bear ;  but  its  comprehension  is  the  key  of  lyric  or 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American   Verse.     263 

idyl,  sonnet  or  epic.  This  to  know  is  also  the 
utter  removal  of  that  foolish  provincialism  or 
quidnunc  superficial  curiosity  which  declares  that 
American  poetry,  if  it  would  exist  at  all,  must  be 
limited  to  pictures  of  the  wharf,  the  prairie,  and 
the  gulch ;  to  city  directories  and  geographical 
indexes ;  to  axe-swinging  pioneers  and  moral 
murderers. 

The  literary  career  of  Mr.  Stedman,  then,  is  in 
all  its  course  a  sufficiently  instructive  illustration 
of  the  dominance  of  the  "gay  science"  over 
wordly  weal,  and  yet  of  the  constant  friendliness 
and  companionship  of  the  two.  The  service  of 
art,  like  that  of  religion,  is  perfect  freedom,  what 
ever  the  imprisoning  environment.  I  suppose 
no  more  strenuous  or  forbidding  circumstances 
can  be  imagined  for  a  poet  than  the  duties  of  a 
war-correspondent  in  the  field,  or  the  stress  of  a 
banker's  daily  life.  When  I  add  that  Mr.  Sted 
man  turned  aside,  in  mature  years,  to  make  a  long 
prose  survey  of  the  multiform  poetic  product  of 
his  time,  the  dissipation  or  distraction  that  has  be 
set  him  would  seem  to  be  complete.  Not  so  ;  the 
field  of  battle,  as  we  have  seen,  subserved  the 
artistic  good  of  "  Alice  of  Monmouth";  in  Wall 
Street  he  found  the  wandering  Pan  ;  and  from 
criticism  he  returned  to  song  with  new  strength 
and  seriousness  of  devotion.  The  poet's  life  is 
dual,  but  however  long  the  soul  and  the  body 
strive  in  earth  or  air,  the  soul  must  win.  Sted 
man  has  kept  clear  of  the  increasing  sense  of 
sadness  that  has  fallen,  mistlike,  over  so  much  of 


264  American  Literature. 

the  later  verse  of  his  fellow-worker,  Stoddard. 
As  one  re-reads  his  books  in  course,  a  steady 
progress  is  marked.  After  the  war-fire  of  "  Alice 
of  Monmouth  "  came  the  serene  idyllic  romance  of 
"  The  Blameless  Prince,"  as  from  the  land  of 
Morris  and  Rossetti,  but  of  wholesomer  tone ; 
while  such  metrical  experiments  as  "Surf"  or  the 
Greek  translations,  and  such  stray  dramatic 
studies  as  "  Anonyma,"  prepared  the  way  for  the 
strength  and  inspiring  suggestiveness  of  the 
"  Dartmouth  Ode,"  or  the  fit  commemoration  of 
Hawthorne  read  at  Harvard  in  1877.  Stedman 
has  been  tempted  overmuch,  like  most  American 
singers,  by  current  themes  of  humor  or  pathos, 
dedication  or  commemoration ;  but  even  his  occa 
sional  verse  has  risen  to  the  merit  of  the  two 
productions  just  mentioned  ;  the  lyric  on  "  Liberty 
Enlightening  the  World";  the  terse  lines  "On 
the  Death  of  an  Invincible  Soldier"  (Grant);  or 
the  scholarly  ode  "  Corda  Concordia,"  read  at  the 
opening,  in  1881,  of  the  Concord  Summer  School 
of  Philosophy.  None  but  a  mature  strength 
could  have  written  the  poem  on  "The  Hand  of 
Lincoln,"  "A  Vigil,"  "The  World  Well  Lost," 
or  the  quaintly  archaic  "  Star  Bearer."  But 
whether  one  read  the  simpler  lyrics  of  his  youth, 
the  two  long  poems,  the  exquisite  song  beginning 

I  know  not  if  moonlight  or  starlight 
Be  soft  on  the  land  and  the  sea, — 

I  catch  but  the  near  light,  the  far  light. 
Of  eyes  that  are  burning  for  me, 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American   Verse.     265 

or  the  statelier  and  serener  productions  of  later 
years,  he  quickly  recognizes  the  poet ;  and  notes, 
as  he  turns  the  pages  of  the  successive  volumes, 
the  onward  and  upward  steps  of  a  true  minstrel- 
journey.  If  he  feels  the  lack  of  a  large,  consoli 
dated  product,  or  at  least  of  an  adequately  repre 
sentative  product,  he  thinks  of  the  troubled  times 
and  manifold  duties  of  the  poet's  first-half  of  life, 
and  remembers  that  the  richer  years  are  still 
before  him. 

The  poetry  of  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich  may  be 
described,  with  substantial  fairness,  in  the  terse 
words  wherein  Emerson  characterizes  Herrick : 
he  "  is  the  lyric  poet,  ostentatiously  _, 

J  rt  J      Thomas  Bailey 

choosing  petty  subjects,  petty  names  Aldrich,  b.  1836. 
for  each  piece,  and  disposing  of  his  theme  in 
a  few  lines,  or  in  a  couplet  ;  is  never  dull,  and 
is  the  master  of  miniature  painting."  Aldrich's 
limitations  and  failures  have  been  recognized 
first  of  all  by  himself;  he  has  anticipated  his 
critics  in  that  rigid  judgment  of  his  own  works 
which  is  so  indignantly  repelled  by  the  majority 
of  singers.  His  literary  pathway  is  strewn  with 
abandoned  books  and  poems  :  the  pretty  juvenile 
story,  "  Daisy's  Necklace,  and  What  Came  of  It "; 
the  romance,  "  Out  of  his  Head";  many  a  lyric  ; 
and  an  occasional  blank-verse  narrative  like  "Gar- 
naut  Hall,"  which  seems  to  me  well  worth  saving. 
Through  his  early  verse  stole  pleasant  echoes  of 
Keats  or  Tennyson ;  in  later  days  he  has  some 
times  essayed,  as  in  "  Miantowona,"  to  treat  an 
Indian  legend  in  an  unfamiliar  metre,  whereby  an 


266  American  Literature. 

injurious  comparison  with  Longfellow  has  imme 
diately  occurred  to  the  reader's  mind  ;  and  his 
dramatic  pictures  have  been  studies  rather  than 
creations.  "Friar  Jerome's  Beautiful  Book" 
proves  his  success  in  narrative  verse,  attested 
once  more  in  "  Judith,"  to  whom  an  Anglo-Saxon 
singer  thus  returned  a  thousand  years  after  the 
first  of  our  poems  on  that  attractive  but  difficult 
theme.  Large  creative  force,  however,  is  not  the' 
quality  upon  which  Aldrich  relies ;  whatsoever 
belongs  to  the  sweet  or  dainty  or  epigrammatic 
lyric  of  art  or  impression  is  his.  From  his  experi- 
An  American  ments  in  subject  and  treatment  he 
Hemck.  returns  to  his  chosen  field  of  early 
youth  with  renewed  confidence  and  more  assured 
success.  The  singer  and  his  readers  would  laugh, 
perhaps,  if  I  were  seriously  to  place  him  on  a 
level  with  Herrick ;  and  yet  the  aspiration  of  the 
closing  lines  of  his  address  to  that  master  has 
sometimes  been  fulfilled  in  Aldrich's  work : 

If  thy  soul,  Herrick,  dwelt  with  me, 
This  is  what  my  songs  would  be : 
Hints  of  our  sea-breezes,  blent 
With  odors  from  the  Orient ; 
Indian  vessels  deep  with  spice, 
Star-showers  from  the  Norland  ice  ; 
Wine-red  jewels  that  seem  to  hold 
Fire,  but  only  burn  with  cold ; 
Antique  goblets,  strangely  wrought, 
Filled  with  the  wine  of  happy  thought; 

Bridal  measures,  vain  regrets, 
Laburnum  buds  and  violets ; 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American   Verse.     267 

Hopeful  as  the  break  of  day; 
Clear  as  crystal ;  new  as  May ; 
Musical  as  brooks  that  run 
O'er  yellow  shadows  in  the  sun  ; 
Soft  as  the  satin  fringe  that  shades 
The  eyelids  of  thy  fragrant  maids ; 
Brief  as  thy  lyrics,  Herrick,  are, 
And  polished  as  the  bosom  of  a  stcr. 

Passing  by  those  Eastern  themes  and  scenes 
which  have  never  lost  their  charm  for  him — 
"  Dressing  the  Bride,"  "  When  the  Sultan  goes  to 
Ispahan,"  "  The  Sultana,"  etc. — one  finds  many  a 
song  of  delicate  quality,  assuring  to  Aldrich,  in  the 
history  of  American  poetry,  a  place  of  his  own, — 
not  that  of  a  masterly  bard,  not  that  of  a  suc 
cessor  of  the  dead  leaders  of  American  song,  but 
that  of  a  maker  of  lines — or  "  Intaglios,"  as  he 
calls  them  in  one  division — which  we  may  call 
"  painted  trifles  and  fantastic  toys,"  without  any 
intimation  that  they  are  not  worthy  of  due  praise. 
One  hardly  need  turn  to  the  book  for  songs  that 
sing  themselves  in  the  brain  :  "  Before  Rememberabie 
the  Rain,"  "After  the  Rain,"  "  Tiger-  Poems- 

Lilies,"  "  May,"  "  Nameless  Pain,"  "The  Lunch," 
4<At  Two  and  Twenty,"  "Amontillado/'  "The 
One  White  Rose,"  "The  Voice  of  the  Sea," 
which,  whether  grave  or  gay,  have  something  of 
the  charm  Aldrich  himself  describes,  as  of 

"Four-line  epics  one  might  hide 
In  the  hearts  of  roses." 

In  my  boyhood  I  used  to  go  about  repeating  to 
myself  the  more  ghostly  or  ghastly  verses,  such 


268  American  Literature. 

as  "Glamourie,"  "December,"  "  Haunted,"  "The 
Tragedy,"  and  "  Seadrift ; "  nor  am  I  quite  will 
ing,  even  now,  to  give  up  poems  which  had  the 
singing  tone,  though  not  the  finished  art,  of  "  Pal- 
abras  Carinosas  "  or  "  A  Snowflake." 

Aldrich  has  not  scorned  the  obvious  and  univer 
sal  in  sentiment,  as  is  shown  by  his  widely  known 
"Baby  Bell,"  the  Beranger-like  "The  Flight  of 
the  Goddess,"  "  The  Bluebells  of  New  England," 
or  the  well-turned  sonnets  "  Fredericksburg "  or 
"  Pursuit  and  Possession."  The  maturer  years, 
however,  have  enabled  him  to  strike  from  a  reflec 
tive  mind,  with  his  fullest  art,  those  brief  poems 
of  thoughtful  conceit  which  have  brought  him 
his  best  fame  and  his  highest  claim  to  original 
creation  :  "  An  Untimely  Thought,"  "  Destiny," 
"  Rencontre,"  and  "  Identity,"  alike  admirable  in 
execution  and  well  deserving  the  attention  they 
have  drawn  from  many  readers  and  an  occasional 
masterful  artist.  I  cannot  however,  assign  to  a 
place  beside  "  An  Untimely  Thought"  or  "  Des 
tiny  "  the  famous  eight  lines  entitled  "Identity" 
—best  known  of  all  Aldrich's  poems.  Its  clever 
ness  of  phrase  conceals  the  essential  falsity  of  its 
underlying  thought.  If  shuddering  shapes  that 
have  forth-fared  have  no  identity,  then,  indeed, 
they  are  dead  when  they  are  dead. 

American  literature  hardly  affords  a  more  strik 
ing  contrast  than  that  between  Aldrich  and  the 
Wait  whit-  last  poet  to  be  chronicled  in  this  chapter, 
man,  b.  1819.  Walt  Whitman  has  strength  without 
artistic  power  or  desire,  and  therefore  would 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American    Verse.     269 

remand  metre,  rhyme,  and  form  in  general  to  the 
bygone  days  of  a  hollow  and  artificial  literature 
and  a  superficial  and  conventional  life. 

In  absolute  ability  he  is  about  equal  to  Taylor, 
Stoddard,  Stedman,  or  Aldrich  ;  but  by  minimiz 
ing  the  spiritual  and  the  artistic,  and  magnifying 
the  physical  and  the  crudely  spontaneous,  he  has  * 
attracted  an  attention  among  critics  in  America, 
England,  and  the  Continental  nations  greater,  for 
the  moment,  than  that  bestowed  upon  any  con 
temporary  singer  of  his  nation,  and  fairly  rivalling 
the  international  adulation  of  his  exact  opposite, 
Poe.  To  him  the  ideal  is  little  and  the  immedi 
ately  actual  is  much  ;  love  is  merely  a  taurine  or 
passerine  passion  ;  and  to-day  is  a  thing  more  im 
portant  than  all  the  past.  His  courage  is  unques 
tionable  ;  his  vigor  is  abounding  ;  and  therefore, 
by  the  very  paradox  of  his  extravagant  demands, 
he  has  impressed  some  and  interested  more,  and 
has  induced  a  limited  but  affectionate  and  exceed 
ingly  vociferous  coterie  to  attempt,  for  his 
sake,  to  revise  the  entire  canon  of  the  world's  art. 
Many  famous  authors  have  bestowed  upon  him 
high  praise — sometimes  revoked  or  ignored  in 
the  calmer  years  of  advancing  life  ;  and  though 
unread  by  the  masses  whose  spokesman  and 
prophet  he  claims  to  be,  and  without  special  in 
fluence  or  increasing  potency,  he  has  been  for  a 
generation  one  of  the  most  conspicuous  of  his 
country's  authors. 

Whitman's  prose  need  not  detain  us  long.     In 
youth  he  wrote  for   The  Democratic  Review  and 


270  American  Literature. 

other  periodicals  brief  stories  (courageously  re- 
Whitman's  printed  in  his  complete  prose-volume, 
prose.  "Specimen  Days  and  Collect  "),  which,  in 
theme  and  treatment,  are  about  equal  to  the 
forgotten  minor  fiction  of  the  sentimental  time 
in  which  they  appeared.  Their  chief  character 
istics  are  obvious  morality  of  the  Sunday-school- 
book  order,  and  a  sensationalism  which  lacked  an 
effective  literary  form.  The  domestic  virtues,  the 
evils  of  intemperance,  the  far-reaching  conse 
quences  of  "One  Wicked  Impulse,"  etc.,  were 
portrayed  in  language  which  assuredly  harmed 
none  and  doubtless  benefited  some.  "The  Child 
and  the  Profligate,"  "Wild  Frank's  Return," 
"  Lingrave's  Temptation,"  "  Little  Jane,"  "  Dumb 
Kate,"  etc.,  occupy  that  pleasant  borderland  of 
literature  which  is  secure  from  the  intrusion  of 
either  praise  or  blame.  The  remainder  of  the 
volume  is  filled  with  random  jottings  concerning 
the  author's  life  in  army  hospitals  during  the  war ; 
his  experiences  'and  sensations  in  city  or  country ; 
his  reflections  on  literature  and  life  ;  his  reminis 
cences  of  Lincoln  and  other  celebrities  ;  his  im 
pressions  of  American  travel ;  his  broadly  opti 
mistic  views  of  democracy  (chiefly  expressed  in  a 
long  essay  entitled  "  Democratic  Vistas  ")  ;  and 
various  prefaces  to  successive  editions  of  his 
poems.  The  prose,  whatever  its  theme,  is  that  of 
an  honest,  hearty,  healthful  man,  fond  of  the 
ruddier  and  commoner  elements  in  humanity, 
impressed  by  natural  scenery  and  out-door  life, 
ardently  attached  to  his  country  and  his  time,  and 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American   Verse.     271 

sincerely  believing  in  that  country's  future.  The 
pleasant  quality  of  these  miscellaneous  pages  is 
their  outspoken  freshness;  but  their  prose  style 
is  a  model  of  inelegance  and  unattractiveness, 
from  the  pen  of  one  who  never  learned  to  write 
well,  and  who  fell,  in  an  untutored  state,  into  a 
lifelong  enslavement  to  the  more  obvious  manner 
isms  of  Carlyle.  "  Specimen  Days  and  Collect," 
in  brief,  has  no  value  save  as  a  commentary  upon 
its  author's  poetry,  and  even  here  its  importance 
is  small,  for  poetry  that  is  not  self-interpretative  is 
the  possession  not  of  literature  but  of  the  estima 
ble  company  of  "  conjectural  readers  "  and  discov 
erers  of  "inner  meanings."  Whitman  would  be 
the  last  to  claim  that  "  Leaves  of  Grass,"  his  life- 
work,  does  not  explain  its  reason  for  being. 

The  plan  of  "  Leaves  of  Grass,"  patiently,  cour 
ageously  and  consistently  elaborated  piece  by 
piece  during  the  author's  whole  lifetime  (and  set 
forth  not  only  in  the  poems  themselves  but  in 
needlessly  numerous  and  verbose  prefaces  and 
prose  articles  by  the  author,  as  well  as  in  his 
spoken  words),  is  to  present  a  complete  picture  of 
typical  humanity  in  the  author's  time  and  land, 
especially  in  its  pioneer  constructiveness,  material 
achievements,  and  hearty  comradeship,  «Leaves  Of 
omitting  no  animal  element  of  the  whole  Grass." 
personality  which  we  call  man  or  woman,  but 
celebrating  and  glorifying  all.  In  this  picture, 
physical  passion  plays  a  large  part,  but  in  the 
claim  of  the  author  and  his  friends,  not  a  dispro 
portionate  one ;  other  equally  important  physio- 


272  American  Literature. 

logical  functions,  such  as  digestion  and  the  circu 
lation  of  the  blood,  are  ignored.  The  sexuality 
of  Whitman's  poems  forms  their  most  obvious 
characteristic,  attracting  the  notice  of  the  evil- 
minded,  disgusting  the  majority  of  readers,  and 
ardently  defended  by  the  members  of  the  Whit 
man  cult,  including  men  and  women  of  whose 
moral  integrity  and  intellectual  capacity  there  can 
be  no  question.  As  regards  this  matter,  it  is  per 
fectly  true  that  passages  as  objectionable  as  those 
in  "  Leaves  of  Grass  "  may  be  culled  from  the  best 
Hebrew,  Arabian,  Greek,  Latin,  Italian,  French 
and  English  literature;  that  "  to  the  pure  all 
things  are  pure  ;"  and  that  the  nineteenth  century 
is  the  first,  in  the  history  of  the  world's  society, 
to  insist  upon  the  omission  of  mention  of  the 
coarser  elements  in  physical  passion.  Further 
more,  Whitman  is  not  the  worst  author  in  the 
world,  even  in  an  increasingly  fastidious  era. 
There  are  some  poets,  who,  without  specially 
indecent  illusion,  throw  around  and  from  their 
books  a  mephitic  atmosphere  more  deadening 
than  Whitman's  frank  and  unblushing  animalism. 
The  fact  remains,  however,  that  the  generative 
faculty,  like  the  sudorific  glands  elsewhere  gloated 
over  by  the  same  author,  is  not  per  se  a  poetic 
theme,  and  that  Whitman's  treatment  of  it  is  des 
titute  of  the  artistic  form  which  alone  makes 
literature  of  the  corresponding  parts  of  the 
"Arabian  Nights"  or  the  "  Decameron." 

There    remains   another   and  all-inclusive  criti 
cism,  affecting  the  entire  plan   and  ultimate  sue- 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American    Verse.     273 

cess  of  "  Leaves  of  Grass,"  and  removing  all 
chance  of  its  association  with  those  great  books  of 
the  world  with  which  Whitman's  admirers  have 
unhesitatingly  classed  it.  This  criticism  is  found 
in  the  candid  admission  from  Whitman  himself, 
that  he  had  planned  to  sing  of  man  both  spiritual 
and  human,  but  was  able  to  carry  out  no  more 
than  the  lesser  half  of  the  grand  thought.  This 
passage,  by  far  the  most  important  in  all  Whit 
man's  prose,  has  been  strangely  overlooked  by 
critics  ;  while  his  extravagant  eulogists  naturally 
dislike  to  give  it  publicity.  With  a  frankness 
which  some  of  his  disciples  might  well  imitate, 
Whitman  here  states  very  explicitly  his  concep 
tion  of  a  complete  man  and  a  complete  poem  of 
man  : 


I  am  not  sure  but  the  last  inclosing  sublimation  of  race  or 
poem  is,  what  it  thinks  of  death  after  the  restjhas  been  compre 
hended  and  said,  even  the  grandest — after  those  contributions 
to  mightiest  nationality,  or  to  sweetest  song,  or  to  the  best 
personalism,  male  or  female,  have  been  gleaned  from  the  rich 
and  varied  themes  of  tangible  life,  and  have  been  fully 
accepted  and  sung,  and  the  pervading  fact  of  visible  existence, 
with  the  duty  it  devolves,  is  rounded  and  apparently  completed. 
It  still  remains  to  be  really  completed  by  suffusing  through  the 
whole  and  several,  that  other  pervading  invisible  fact,  so  large 
a  part  (is  it  not  the  largest  part  ?)  of  life  here,  combining  the 
rest,  and  furnishing,  for  person  or  State,  the  only  permanent 
and  unitary  meaning  to  all,  even  the  meanest  life,  consistently 
with  the  dignity  of  the  universe,  in  Time.  As  from  the  eligi 
bility  to  this  thought,  and  the  cheerful  conquest  of  this  fact, 
flash  forth  the  first  distinctive  proofs  of  the  soul,  so  to  me 
(extending  it  only  a  little  further,)  the  ultimate  Democratic 
purports,  the  ethereal  and  spiritual  ones,  are  to  concentrate 
18 


274  American  Literature. 

here,  and  as  fixed  stars,  radiate  hence.  For,  in  my  opinion,  it 
is  no  less  than  this  idea  of  immortality,  above  all  other  ideas, 
that  is  to  enter  into,  and  vivify,  and  give  crowning  religious 
stamp,  to  democracy  in  the  New  World. 

It  was  orignially  my  intention,  after  chanting  in  "  Leaves  of 
Grass  "  the  songs  of  the  body  and  existence,  to  then  compose 
a  further,  equally  needed  volume,  based  on  those  convictions 
of  perpetuity  and  conservation  which,  enveloping  all  prece 
dents,  make  the  unseen  soul  govern  absolutely  at  last.  I 
meant,  while  in  a  sort  continuing  the  theme  of  my  first  chants, 
to  shift  the  slides,  and  exhibit  the  problem  and  paradox  of  the 
same  ardent  and  fully  appointed  personality  entering  the 
sphere  of  the  resistless  gravitation  of  spiritual  law,  and  with 
cheerful  face  estimating  death,  not  at  all  as  the  cessation,  but 
as  somehow  what  I  feel  it  must  be,  the  entrance  upon  by  far 
the  greatest  part  of  existence,  and  something  that  life  is  at 
least  as  much  for,  as  it  is  for  itself.  But  the  full  construction 
of  such  a  work  is  beyond  my  powers,  and  must  remain  for 
some  bard  in  the  future.  The  physical  and  the  sensuous,  in 
themselves  or  in  their  immediate  continuations,  retain  holds 
upon  me  which  I  think  are  never  entirely  releas'd  ;  and  those 
holds  I  have  not  only  denied,  but  hardly  wish'd  to  weaken. 

Meanwhile,  not  entirely  to  give  the  go-by  to  my  original 
plan,  and  far  more  to  avoid  a  mark'd  hiatus  in  it,  than  to 
entirely  fulfil  it,  I  end  my  books  with  thoughts,  or  radiations 
from  thoughts,  on  death,  immortality,  and  a  free  entrance  into 
the  spiritual  world.  In  those  thoughts,  in  a  sort,  I  make  the 
first  steps  or  studies  toward  the  mighty  theme,  from  the  point 
of  view  necessitated  by  my  foregoing  poems,  and  by  modern 
science.  In  them  I  also  seek  to  set  the  key-stone  to  my 
democracy's  enduring  arch.  I  recollate  them  now,  for  the 
press,  in  order  to  partially  occupy  and  offset  days  of  strange 
sickness,  and  the  heaviest  affliction  and  bereavement  of  my 
life ;  and  I  fondly  please  myself  with  the  notion  of  leaving 
that  cluster  to  you,  O  unknown  reader  of  the  future,  as  "  some 
thing  to  remember  me  by,"  more  especially  than  all  else.* 

*  Preface,  1876,  to  the  two  volume  Centennial  Edition  of  "  Leaves  of 
Grass"  and  "  Two  Rivulets," — reprinted  in  "  Specimen  Days  and  Collect," 
281,  note. 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American    Verse.     275 

Nothing  could  be  more  definite  (in  spite  of  the 
prose  style,  involved  as  usual)  than  this  utterance 
concerning  the  written  poem  and  the  unwritten 
one  ;  it  is  a  credit  to  the  author's  mind  and  soul. 
But  as  far  as  "  Leaves  of  Grass"  is  concerned,  we 
are  limited  to  that  which  it  is,  and  must  judge  its 
success  by  the  criterion  set  up  by  Whitman  him 
self.  The  feet  and  legs,  of  clay  cannot  be  made, 
by  mere  blindness  or  vociferation,  to  take  the 
place  of  an  entire  marble  statue. 

As  a  poem  of  the  individual,  therefore,  "  Leaves 
of  Grass "  is  essentially  imperfect.  There  are 
three  parts  in  creative  success  .-  the  aim,  the  means, 
and  the  result ;  here  the  aim  itself,  so  far  its  iimita- 
as  the  printed  poem  is  concerned,  is 
admittedly  inadequate.  That  which  we  call  man 
or  woman  includes  more  than  body  ;  more  than 
external  achievement  ;  more,  even,  than  loyal 
comradeship  and  affectionate  association.  The 
vicissitudes  of  life,  death,  suffering,  struggle, 
aspiration,  occasional  triumph,  all  point  us  toward 
an  eternal  development  of  spirit.  If  our  continued 
life  be  a  fact,  most  that  Whitman  "  celebrates  "  is 
temporary  and  unimportant ;  while  that  which  he 
confesses  himself  unable  to  treat — the  ideal,  the 
ultimately  beautiful,  the  on-faring  and  forth-faring 
soul — is  the  very  life  of  our  life.  Not  so  Job, 
Isaiah,  Joel,  Homer,  Virgil,  Dante,  Shakespeare. 
Enough  of  these  comparisons,  so  dear  to  Whit 
man's  admirers  !  not  so  Longfellow,  Whittier, 
Emerson,  Poe.  It  has  been  claimed  that  there  is 
a  great  triple  underlying  thought  in  "  Leaves  of 


276  American  Literature. 

Grass "  from  beginning  to  end  :  the  thought  of 
unity,  beauty,  and  progression.  If  this  were  so  it 
would  be  a  great  poem,  at  least  in  aim.  But  the 
unity  is  that  of  indifferent  conglomeration,  the 
beauty  is  imperfect  or  unethereal,  and  the  pro 
gression  is  unduly  physical  and  material. 

Turning  to  the  second  element  in  Whitman's 
verse,  its  form,  we  find  the  unrhymed  and  unmet- 
rical,  but  not  unstudied  or  unmusical,  chant 
familiar  in  the  authorized  English  translation  of 
the  poetical  passages  of  the  Bible,  in  the  so-called 
its  verse-  Poems  of  Ossian,  in  Tupper,  and  in  some 
form.  £ew  other  writers.  Whitman's  choice  of 
this  potentially  noble  form  was  wise  ;  it  is,  though 
no  novelty,  comparatively  unfamiliar  ;  it  naturally 
fits  his  bold  and  outspoken  reflections  or  descrip 
tions,  avoids  nearly  all  the  vexatious  fetters  of 
verse,  and  gives  a  free  mind  a  free  medium  of 
utterance.  Printed  as  prose  (save  in  its  tedious 
and  oft-recurring  catalogues)  it  would  show  obvi 
ous  merits,  easily  surpassing  the  avowed  prose  of 
its  own  author.  In  its  present  quasi  verse-form 
it  is  often  pleasing  and  sometimes  resonant  and 
stately,  though  seldom  becoming  the  art-product 
essential  in  whatsoever  is  poetry.  We  do  not 
demand  rhyme  in  poetry,  nor  always  metre  ;  but 
rhythmical  beauty  is  essential.  In  its  feebler 
divisions  it  may  be  parodied  and  equalled  ;  in  its 
best  estate  it  may  fairly  challenge  comparison 
with  the  higher  work  of  any  American  poet  of  the 
second  grade.  Chiefly  when  Whitman's  eye  turns 
in  the  direction  of  theism,  individual  immortality, 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American   Verse.     277 

affectionate  commemoration  of  the  dead,  heartfelt 
sympathy,  loving  appreciation  of  the  supernal 
beauty  of  nature,  does  he  excel ;  a  fact  which 
shows  once  more  that  the  misapplication  of  his 
powers  has  stunted  and  half-hidden  his  better 
poetic  self.  The  noblest  parts  of  "  Leaves  of 
Grass"  are  devoted  to  these  themes,  and  not  to 
blatant  egotism  or  sprawling  "  Americanism." 
The  poet,  after  some  experimenting  in  early  life, 
deliberately  put  his  worst  foot  forward,  but  he 
followed  the  law  of  negatives  so  dexterously  that 
he  found  not  the  slightest  difficulty  in  arousing 
and  retaining  interest,  because  of  his  strenuous 
and  oft-repeated  assertion  of  that  which  was  least 
worth  asserting  at  all.  His  half-perception  of  this 
fact  undoubtedly  dictates  his  frequent  statement 
of  the  experimental  and  limited  character  of  his 
pioneer-book,  which  is  occasionally  noble,  shows 
many  a  beautiful  thought  or  line,  but  is  crammed 
with  an  undigested  miscellany. 

In  the  course  of  a  certain  famous  American 
trial,  the  accused,  who  was  a  man  of  unusual  clev 
erness  of  speech,  said  that  one  of  his  greatest  dif 
ficulties  was  to  keep  his  friends  from  breaking  out 
into  a  ruinous  defence  of  him.  Whitman  (and 
Emerson)  might  say  the  same  thing.  Both  Whit 
man  and  Emerson  have  been  wiser  than  their  dis 
ciples  ;  the  "  poet  of  democracy,"  whom  his  adula 
tors  compare  with  Homer,  ^Eschylus,  and  Shakes 
peare,  not  wholly  to  the  advantage  of  the  latter, 
modestly  avers,  notwithstanding  his  dramatic 
egotism  in  his  poems,  that  he  makes  no  such 


278  American  Literature. 

claims,  and  that  his  work  must  wait  a  hundred 
years  for  a  just  estimate.  At  the  end  of  a  cent 
ury,  I  think,  it  will  be  apparent  that  "  Leaves  of 
what  it  Grass  "  is  not  "  the  revealer  and  herald  "  of 
is  not.  «a  reiigious  era  not  yet  reached;"  "the 
bible  of  Democracy,  containing  the  highest  exem 
plar  of  life  yet  furnished,"  including  "  a  new  spir 
itual  life  for  myriads  of  men  and  women,"  and 
"  unspeakably  important."  *  Nor  is  its  mission  to 
restore  the  lost  and  forgotten  spirit  of  the  Golden 
Rule  "  to  heroic  and  active  influence  among 
men."f  Whitman  fails  strongly  to  enforce  the 
power  of  true  individuality,  not  lost  in  the  mass 
of  the  population,  or  in  indiscriminate  comrade 
ship.  His  love  of  neighbor  is  too  ardent,  fleshly, 
immediate,  material.  He  does  not  peer,  like 
Emerson,  far  below  the  bottom  of  the  grave,  and 
high  above  the  cross  on  the  spire-top.  The  vast 
relations  between  God,  soul,  love,  and  eternity 
are  but  partly  visible  to  this  poet  of  practical 
progress.  The  sublimities  of  the  ideal,  the  ever 
lasting  development  of  the  soul,  and  not  merely 
of  man  among  men,  are  confused  or  lost  in  pan 
oramic  pictures  of  America  between  1855  and 
1885.  His  highest  thought  is  not  fitly  voiced  in 
his  verse,  which  falls  short  of  Whitman,  as  Whit 
man  falls  short  of  him  who  sang  : 

To  read  the  sense  the  woods  impart 
You  must  bring  the  throbbing  heart. 

*  Richard  Maurice  Bucke,  "  Walt  Whitman,"  pp.  183,  185,  190. 
t  Ernest  Rhys,  introduction  to  "  The  Poems  of  Walt  Whitman  (selected)," 
page  x  ;  London  :  1886. 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American   Verse.     279 

Love  is  aye  the  counterforce, — 
Terror  and  Hope  and  wild  Remorse, 
Newest  knowledge,  fiery  thought, 
Or  Duty  to  grand  purpose  wrought.* 

Partial  and  poor  is  Whitman's  world,  thus 
measured.  All  that  may  rightly  be  claimed  for 
him  is  found  in  Emerson,  plus  an  insight  into 
nature,  a  broader  sense  of  love  as  ever  passing 
between  man's  God  and  God's  man,  a  wider  and 
higher  and  more  spiritual  sympathy,  a  thought 
more  profound,  a  knowledge  intuitively  American 
and  studiously  classic,  an  interpenetrative  sense  of 
the  glory  of  duty  and  the  serenity  of  beauty.  He 
who  has  failed  to  satisfy  his  own  time  that  he  has 
portrayed  its  full  life  as  it  knows  life,  can  never 
be  the  "poet  of  the  future."  Notwithstanding 
his  pioneer  spirit  and  eager  outlook,  in  many 
respects  his  face  is  turned  backward  toward  a  far 
cruder,  baser,  narrower,  past.  To  limit  or  to 
omit  the  ideal  is  not  to  become  the  leader  of 
times  and  men  yet  to  be.  The  ideal  is  the  poet's 
vision,  the  soul  and  body  of  his  song : 

"Thy  light  alone— like  mist  o'er  mountains  driven, 
Or  music  by  the  night-wind  sent, 
Thro'  strings  of  some  still  instrument, 
Or  moonlight  on  a  midnight  stream, 
Gives  grace  and  truth  to  life's  unquiet  dream."  t 

But    though    Whitman's    poetic    and    spiritual 
sense  may  be  so  defective  as  to  unfit  him  to  be  a 

*  Emerson,  "  The  Miracle." 

*  Shelley,  "  Hymn  to  Intellectual  Beauty." 


280  American  Literature. 

seer  or  an  artist,  much  of  his  work  is  admirable 
what  and  enjoyable.  I  have  no  sympathy  with 
lt:  is-  his  worshippers,  but  no  greater  fondness  for 
the  bigots  and  prudes  who  condemn  him  unread. 
His  theory  of  his  life-poem  is  defective,  but  so  far 
as  it  goes  is  perfectly  legitimate.  It  has  been 
carried  out  with  strength,  and  forms  one  of  the 
best  examples  of  poetic  development  afforded  in 
modern  literature.  Its  assertions  of  comradeship 
(hardly  of  friendship  in  the  large  true  sense), 
pioneer  manliness,  the  essential  wholesomeness 
and  nobility  of  average  American  character,  the 
self-reliant  and  self-preserving  nature  of  democ 
racy,  the  worthlessness  of  feudalism,  the  dangers 
of  the  merely  conventional,  the  possibilities  of  the 
future  of  "these  states,"  are  excellent.  Whit 
man's  poems,  too,  readily  proffer  lines  lovely  or 
lordly,  pictures  freshly  creative  and  spontaneously 
welcome.  The  title  of  poet  is  not  to  be  denied 
to  him  who  wrote  "  Crossing  Brooklyn  Ferry," 
"  Song  of  the  Broad-Axe,"  "  Pioneers,  O  Pio 
neers,"  "To  the  Man-of-War  Bird,"  "Come  up 
from  the  Fields,  Father,"  "  The  City  Dead-House," 
"Proud  Music  of  the  Storm,"  "Whispers  of 
Heavenly  Death,"  or,  best  of  all,  the  remarkable 
commemorative  poems  "  When  Lilacs  Last  in  the 
Dooryard  Bloom'd,"  and  "  O  Captain,  my  Cap 
tain."  Whitman  is  the  fittest  of  all  laureates  of 
Lincoln,  whose  greatness  the  years  are  making 
plainer ;  and  in  his  non-personal  and  non-martial 
verse  he  is  never  to  be  accounted  less  than  an 
original  and  significantly  interesting  bard. 


Tones  and  Tendencies  of  American   Verse.     281 

Not  to  him  alone,  not  to  any  one  man,  will  fall 
the  task  of  moulding-  the  future  song;  of 

i   •    i  -11    i  11.        The  future 

America,  which  will  be  at  once   catholic     American 
and  local,  of  all  time  and  of  its  own  time. 
Each  of  our  spring-tide  singers  is  but  a  herald  of 
summer,  and  to  each  may  we  say  : 

I  sat  beneath  a  fragrant  tasselled  tree, 

Whose  trunk  encoiling  vines  had  made  to  be 

A  glossy  fount  of  leafage.     Sweet  the  air, 

Far-off  the  smoke-veiled  city  and  its  care, 

Precious  and  near  the  book  within  my  hand — 

The  deathless  song  of  that  immortal  land 

Wherefrom  Keats  took  his  young  Endymion 

And  laurelled  bards  enow  their  wreaths  have  won; — 

When  from  some  topmost  spray  began  to  chant 

And  flute,  and  trill,  a  warbling  visitant, 

A  cat-bird,  riotous  the  world  above, 

Hasting  to  spend  his  heritance  ere  love 

Should  music  change  to  madness  in  his  throat, 

Leaving  him  naught  but  one  discordant  note. 

And  as  my  home-bred  chorister  outvied 

The  nightingale,  old  England's  lark  beside, 

I  thought — What  need  to  borrow  ?     Lustier  clime 

Than  ours  Earth  has  not, — nor  her  scroll  a  time 

Ampler  of  human  glory  and  desire 

To  touch  the  plume,  the  brush,  the  lips,  with  fire; 

No  sunrise  chant  on  ancient  shore  and  sea, 

Since  sang  the  morning  stars,  more  worth  shall  be 

Than  ours,  once  uttered  from  the  very  heart 

Of  the  glad  race  that  here  shall  act  its  part: 

Blithe  prodigal,  the  rhythm  free  and  strong 

Of  thy  brave  voice  forecasts  our  poet's  song!* 

*  Stedman,  "  Music  at  Home." 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  BELATED  BEGINNING  OF  FICTION. 

FICTION,  at  its  best,  forms  the  highest  division 
of  prose  literature.  The  delineation  of  life,  in  its  J 
complete  sense,  is  its  theme ;  and  this  delineation, 
in  fiction  as  in  poetry,  must  include  the  body, 
mind,  and  soul  of  man,  in  his  journey  from  the 
infinite  to  the  infinite.  The  "  light  that 

Fiction  the  .  ° 

highest        never  was  on  sea  or  land,     the  ideal  that 

prose.  t       •  r  i  i  11 

glorifies  and  interprets  the  real,  the 
unseen  that  explains  to  us  the  fuller  meaning  of 
the  seen,  belong  to  Cervantes,  Le  Sage,  Gold 
smith,  Scott,  Hawthorne,  as  truly  as  to  Dante  and 
Shakespeare,  Wordsworth  and  Emerson.  The 
ideal  is  far  more  than  the  visionary  and  fanciful, 
more,  indeed,  than  mere  imagination  in  its  lower 
fields.  It  is  truth  in  its  largest  sense,  a  truth  so 
full  and  round  that  but  part  of  its  revealed  glory 
is  visible  at  once.  Toward  it  the  mind  springs 
ever  forward  with  instinctive  recognition  and 
undying  delight. 

Between    prose-fiction    and  imaginative  poetry  j 
the  drama  (as  in  any  play  of  Shakespeare)  stands  ' 
as  a  middle-ground.     Shakespeare's    view    of  life 
includes,   at   one    extreme,    heavenly   and   earthly 
things  undreamt  of  in  narrow  philosophy,  and  at 
the  other  Launce  and  his    dog,  or  Juliet's  nurse. 

282 


The  Belated  Beginning  of  Fiction.         28 


So  the  prose  story,  in  its  scheme,  may  be  the 
ideal  romance,  bursting  the  bonds  of  space  and 
time,  or  the  simplest  unadorned  tale  of  actual 
sayings  and  doings.  Its  possibilities  are  necessa 
rily  inferior  to  those  of  poetry,  not  in  thought  but 
in  form,  for  verse  can  display  a  higher  art  than 
prose. 

No  long  argument,  therefore,  is  needed  to 
show  the  essential  wisdom  of  studying  together 
the  poetry  and  the  fiction  of  a  country  or  a  time. 
Whatever  can  be  separated  in  a  criti-  Unity  of  poetry 
cism  or  literary  history,  these  two  and  fiction. 
things  are  indissoluble.  The  tales  and  poems  of  \ 
Poe  are  one  ;  and  scarcely  more  severable,  in  our 
study  of  the  American  intellectual  product,  are 
Hawthorne  and  Lowell,  Irving  and  Drake,  Mrs.  * 
Stowe  and  Whittier.  Comparisons  and  associa 
tions  cannot  be  pushed  too  far,  but  it  is  evident 
that  the  creator  of  "  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans" 
and  the  creator  of  "  Hiawatha"  are  products  of  the 
same  soil,  with  an  art  more  unified  than  severed, 
however  unlike  their  capacities  and  methods. 

In  this  view  of  the  province  of  fiction,  the 
earliest  achievements  of  American  novelists  seem 
laughable  or  contemptible.  We  talk  of  the  ideal 
and  the  ineffable,  and  are  obliged  to  begin  with 
Susanna  Rowson  and  Tabitha  Tenney.  But 
English  fiction  dates  back  little  farther  than  their 
day  ;  and  it  was  long  indeed  before  any  Anglo- 
Saxon  prose-writers  learned  to  tread  in  the  steps 
of  Boccaccio,  Cervantes,  and  Le  Sage.  The 
downfall  of  the  English  drama  necessarily  pre- 


284  American  Liter  atiire. 

ceded  the  development  of  the  novel,  its  successor 
Art-starvation  as  a  means  of  intellectual  amusement. 
in  America.  £ut  America,  prior  to  1750,  had  no 
drama,  no  joy  of  art,  and  no  creative  impulse 
outside  of  politics.  Even  its  theology  was  a  slave 
in  chains.  New  England,  in  particular,  was  virtu 
ally  blind  to  the  infinite  vision  which  makes  life 
worth  living,  and  inspires  religion,  philosophy, 
literature,  the  arts,  and  science  to  struggle  toward 
a  more  perfect  expression.  Religion,  on  its  exter 
nal  side,  was  a  narrow  but  intense  rectitude,  as 
the  essential  preparation,  in  a  rigid  scheme,  for 
a  theologically  constructed  heaven.  Philosophy 
was  an  assistant  to  Calvinistic  theology,  literature 
was  explicitly  didactic,  the  arts  were  non-existent, 
and  science  was  timid  "  natural  philosophy." 
All  this,  as  I  have  elsewhere  pointed  out,  was 
valuable  in  nation-building,  but  not  immediately 
beneficial  to  literature.  Outside  of  New  England, 
similar  conditions  prevailed,  especially  in  New 
Jersey  ;  in  Pennsylvania  thrift,  incipient  practical 
philanthropy,  and  botanical  and  physical  science 
were  not  influential  in  art ;  and  in  the  southern 
colonies,  indifferent  toward  doctrinal  quiddities, 
politics  was  the  chief  form  of  creative  activity,  as 
theology  had  long  been  in  Massachusetts  and 
Connecticut. 

One  poor  little  means  of  expression,  neverthe 
less,  was  at  length  vouchsafed  in  fiction.  How- 
oid  novels  eyer  limited,  timid,  bigoted,  inartistic, 
of  "feeimg."  Qr  ignOrant  a  people  may  be,  it  is  sure 
to  have  "feelings."  The  growing  sentimentalism 


The  Belated  Beginning  of  Fiction.         285 

which  was  to  affect  even  the  higher  poetry  and 
fiction  of  Germany  and  England  made  its  trifling 
mark  upon  nascent  American  literature.  In  the 
last  decade  of  the  eighteenth  century  appeared 
"  Charlotte  Temple,  a  Tale  of  Truth,"  by  Mrs. 
Rowson — actress,  playwright,  poet,  school-teacher, 
text-book  compiler,  and  voluminous 

1  Susanna  (Has- 

sentimental    novelist.      Its  pages   were    well)  Rowson, 

1  u    J  J        '^u  r  1761-1824. 

long  bedewed  with  many  tears  of  many 
readers  ;  and,  alone  among  our  few  eighteenth 
century  tales,  it  survives  to-day,  if  a  cheap  pam 
phlet  issue,  addressed  to  a  somewhat  illiterate 
public  of  readers,  can  be  called  survival.  Its  long- 
drawn  melancholy  is  unrelieved  by  a  touch  of  art  ; 
it  is  not  even  amusing  in  its  absurdity.  After 
Mrs.  Rowson's  burst  of  tears  came  Mrs.  Tenney's 
sarcastic  laugh ;  she  castigated  in  her  Tabitha  (G}1, 
"  Female  Quixotism,  exemplified  in  the  man)  Tenney, 
Romantic  Opinions  and  Extravagant 
Adventures  of  Dorcasina  Sheldon,"  the  lachry 
mose  and  gushing  willingness  of  young  women 
to*  believe  in  everything  superficially  romantic. 
Dorcasina  was  an  American  Lydia  Languish,  and 
was  at  least  an  improvement  upon  Mrs.  Rowson's 
melancholy  heroine — whose  misfortunes,  unfortu 
nately,  were  substantially  those  of  a  poor  girl  in 
real  life.  The  actual,  however,  did  not  exert  any 
unwholesomely  chastening  effect  upon  Mrs.  Row- 
son's  imaginary  land  of  trusting  maidens,  fiendish 
deceivers,  cypress  and  rue.  These  poor  old 
books  were  issued  by  the  dozen,  proudly  printed 
by  the  presses  of  a  provincial  little  nation,  and 


286  American  Literature. 

marked  on  their  margins  with  many  a  pencilled 
adjective  of  admiration  or  horror.  The  literary 
chronicle,  however,  cannot  pause  to  note,  even  as 
curiosities,  their  mottos  from  "  Night  Thoughts," 
their  sincere  morality,  and  their  occasionally 
respectable  prose  or  interlarded  verse.  But  there 
is  something  pathetic  about  the  faded  melodra 
matic  piety  of  such  a  typical  book  as  Caroline 
Matilda  Warren's  "  The  Gamesters  ;  or,  The 
Ruins  of  Innocence"  (Boston,  1805),  now  as  dead 
and  forgotten  as  the  little  glittering  moth  that 
met  its  own  death  between  two  of  its  heavy 
leaves. 

American  fiction,  however,  had  already  made  a 

distinctly  significant  and  important  beginning  in 

the  works  of  Charles  Brockden  Brown, 

Charles  Brock-  ^  ' 

den  Brown,  which  stand  toward  our  later  tales  and 
1771-1810.  .  .  . 

romances  in  a  relation  similar  to  that 

held  by  Freneau's  "  House  of  Night"  toward  later 
American  verse.  These  old  novels  :  * — "  Arthur 
Mervyn,  or,  Memories  of  the  Year  1793  "  ;  "  Wie- 
land,  or,  The  Transformation  "  ;  "  Edgar  Huntly, 
or,  Memories  of  a  Sleep  Walker";  "Jane  Tal- 
bot "  ;  "  Ormond,  or,  The  Secret  Witness  "  ;  "  Clara 
Howard,  or,  The  Enthusiasm  of  Love"-— were  our 
first  considerable  essays  in  what  was  to  become  a 
great  and  growing  division  of  creative  literature ; 
and  Brown  was  the  earliest  man  of  letters,  in  the 
professional  sense,  in  the  United  States.  Their 
old-fashioned  tone  is  of  course  apparent  at  once  ; 

*  Fitly  republished  in  1887  in  the  standard  library  edition  ot  Mr.  David 
McKay,  of  Philadelphia. 


The  Belated  Beginning  of  Fiction.          287 

repetitions  and  confusions  are  not  hard  to  find ; 
in  "  Edgar  Huntly  "  the  author  falls  into  the  inar 
tistic  error  of  introducing  two  somnambulists,  and 
elsewhere  he  sometimes  forgets  the  personages 
introduced  or  the  minor  details  of  the  plot  as  pre 
viously  developed.  "  Sensibility "  and  melodra 
matic  horror  violently  intrude  upon  the  reader's 
notice  instead  of  being  .allowed  to  rise  in  con 
structive  order ;  the  deus  ex  machina  is  altogether 
too  visible.  In  the  yellow-fever  portrayals  to 
which  Brown  reverts  more  than  once,  and  in  cer 
tain  accumulations  of  murders  in  other  chapters, 
mere  numerical  increase  is  made  to  take  the  place 
of  deliberate  and  orderly  art.  But  whatever  the 
crudeness  and  irregularity  of  these  books,  what 
ever  their  prevalent  melancholy  hue,  they  have  an 
inherent  merit  by  no  means  small.  Brown  had 
the  sense  to  see,  in  our  period  of  colonial  subser 
viency,  that  American  scenes  and  characters  (in 
cluding  the  North  American  Indian  whom  Cooper 
followed  him  in  portraying)  afforded  fit  portent  of 
themes  for  the  novelist  ;  and  in  some  Brown's  work- 
of  his  literary  effects  he  anticipated  Poe,  and 
even,  in  a  small  way,  suggested  Hawthorne.  The 
call-note  of  our  greatest  fiction  sounded  clear, 
though  faint  and  far,  in  Brockden  Brown.  As 
one  takes  from  the  shelf  any  of  Brown's  books- 
even  the  preposterous  "Clara  Howard,  or,  The 
Enthusiasm  of  Love"-— he  is  sure  to  find,  amid  a 
sufficiency  of  failures,  some  touch  of  what  we  call 
genius  ;  some  passport  to  a  corner,  if  no  more,  in 
the  land  of  imagination. 


288  American  Literature. 

"Not  all  the  wonder  that  encircles  us, 
Not  all  the  mysteries  that  in  us  lie  " 

did  Brockden  Brown's  sad  eye  miss.  Edward 
Dowden,  in  his  life  of  Shelley,  tells  us  that 
Brown's  novels,  with  Schiller's  ''Robbers"  and 
Goethe's  ''Faust,"  "were — of  all  the  works  with 
which  he  was  familiar — those  which  took  the 
deepest  root  in  Shelley's  mind,  and  had  the 
strongest  influence  in  the  formation  of  his  char 
acter."  That  high  poet  looked  beyond  the 
timidly  conventional  and  the  obviously  apparent, 
and  found  a  thought-kinsman,  though  of  stature 
less  than  his,  working  all  alone  in  the  poverty 
beyond  the  sea. 

The  similarity  between  Brown's  general  roman 
tic  manner  and  the  prevalent  fashion  then  regnant 
The  prevalent  m  English  minor  fiction  is  too  obvious 
fashion.  to  neec}  mention.  He  was  a  sort  of 

early  American  Cyril  Tourneur,  in  whom  original 
strength  and  crude  expression  were  alternately 
visible  in  the  treatment  of  weird  and  deathly 
themes.  The  women  of  his  romances  are  some 
times  over-sweetly,  and  therefore  weakly,  por 
trayed,  but  they  are  at  least  stronger  and  more 
characteristic  than  most  of  the  pink-and-white 
blushing-and-weeping  nonentities  of  the  time.  In 
his  day  and  way,  and  in  his  short  sick  life,  Brown 
made  a  beginning  of  which  American  fiction  need  in 
no  wise  be  ashamed.  If  he  was  unduly  influenced 
by  darksome  or  lurid  romance,  by  emotions  more 
vague  than  properly  mysterious,  and  by  a  storm 
of  sentiment  that  seems  far  enough  away  from 


The  Belated  Beginning  of  Fiction.         289 

the  intensely  real  sentiment  of  "  The  Scarlet 
Letter"  and  "The  Marble  Faun,"  let  us  remember 
that  all  Germany  and  half  England  were  swept  by 
the  flood  whose  farthest  waves  moved  him  in  his 
path.  At  the  worst  he  never  wrote  aught  so 
wretched  as  "  The  Sorrows  of  Werther " ;  while 
at  the  best  his  work  foreshowed  the  triumphs  to 
be  won  by  the  three  greatest  of  his  successors 
among  American  novelists. 

From  Irving,  however,  not  Brown,  came  the 
widely  apparent  commencement  of  our  native 
fiction.  He  wrote  no  novel,  or  romance, 

Washington 

nor  had  he  the  constructive  art  which  Irving, 
would  have  made  such  a  venture  success 
ful.  But  the  Hudson  stories  in  "  The  Sketch- 
Book"  combine  nearly  every  merit  that  can  be 
found  or  wished  in  a  tale  of  humor.  They  are 
local  in  scene  and  character,  strong  in  delineation 
of  the  personages  introduced,  and  thoroughly 
artistic  in  literary  form  and  elaboration.  Descrip 
tion  of  natural  scenery,  rollicking  fun,  and  sug 
gested  pathos  are  combined  in  a  graceful  and 
delightful  whole.  Irving,  as  a  tale-maker,  applied 
a  confident  and  manifest  linguistic  skill  to  the 
production  and  perpetuation  of  an  indigenous 
literary  creation.  New  York  and  old  England 
found  in  him  a  writer  whose  charm  was  instantly 
recognizable,  and  was  pervasive,  not  strenuously 
novel  or  self-assertive.  Pleasure  preceded  analy 
sis  on  the  reader's  part,  and  the  product  seemed 
too  spontaneous  to  suggest  the  labor  limae  be 
hind.  When  to  novelty  in  theme  and  form  was 


290  American  Literature. 

added  the  easy  serenity  of  an  assured  and  confi- 
The  true  dent  literary  touch,  American  fiction  had 
Aemenrkarn0f  clearly  passed  beyond  the  stage  of  apol- 
fiction.  Ogy  anci  curiosity.  A  success  need  not 
be  in  the  "grand  manner"  in  order  to  be  conspic 
uous  and  enduring ;  if  it  remain,  as  the  years  go 
on,  secure  from  rivalry  or  even  imitation,  and  if 
author  and  tale  seem  indissolubly  related  to  each 
other,  readers  and  critics  have  but  to  enjoy  and 
record  the  triumph.  That  which  is  self-centred 
and  manifest  in  its  success  is  gratefully  to  be 
accepted  ;  critical  study  may  follow  if  it  will,  or 
be  dispensed  with  altogether. 

Throughout  the  essays  of  Irving,  as  in  "  The 
Spectator"  and  its  followers,  there  runs  a  thread 
The  novelist  which  suggests  the  novelist.  The  pict- 
m  Irving.  ures  of  persons  in  the  humorous  or 
pathetic  papers  of  "  The  Sketch-Book,"  the 
delineations  of  English  country  life  in  "  Brace- 
bridge  Hall,"  the  romantic  portrayals  of  castle  or 
battle  in  the  Spanish  histories  and  biographies, 
the  wider  constructiveness  of  "  Knickerbocker's 
History  of  New  York,"  at  once  take  us  back  to 
the  creator  of  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley.  Addison, 
in  "The  Spectator,"  was  social  satirist,  genial 
essayist,  literary  critic,  religious  philosopher, 
precursor  of  journalist  and  magazinist,  and  fore 
runner  of  all  eighteenth  century  English  fiction  as 
well.  Irving  led  no  procession  in  which  a  new 
De  Foe,  Richardson,  Fielding  or  Goldsmith 
appeared,  but  he  taught  Americans  to  "  paint  the 
prospect  from  their  door,"  if  they  would  win  any 


The  Belated  Beginning  of  Fiction.         291 

success  worth  having.  Brown's  aim  was  too  high 
for  his  powers  or  strength  ;  Irving  measured  his 
capacities  of  creation,  elaboration,  and  adornment 
with  entire  accuracy,  save  in  the  fields  of  history 
and  travel.  All  that  lay  within  him,  as  far  as  the 
writing  of  fiction  was  concerned,  he  gave  us  ;  and 
that  his  success  was  no  accident,  but  the  nice 
adjustment  of  mind  to  theme,  is  shown  by  the 
fact  that,  in  their  way,  the  English  sketches  are 
as  good  as  the  American,  and  that  in  the  many- 
toned  "  Tales  of  a  Traveller"  or  such  a  foreign 
fun-sketch  as  "The  Spectre  Bridegroom"  the 
charm  of  the  two  greater  and  more  characteristic 
triumphs  is  not  lost  to  sight.  He  who  had  early 
begun  to  portray  with  dainty  skill,  not  untouched 
by  the  kindly  exaggeration  then  in  vogue,  the 
several  characters  introduced  in  "  Salmagundi," 
was  able  in  his  many  succeeding  works  to  transfer 
the  same  power  to  other  lands  and  times  and 
themes. 

Irving  possessed  the  sympathy  and  the  observ 
ant  faculty  which  should  belong  to  the  novelist ; 
and  his  wisdom  in  the  choice  of  really  indige 
nous  themes,  combined  elsewhere  with  a  catholic 
temper  and  the  enrichment  of  thought  which 
foreign  travel  bestows,  admirably  fitted 

1  •        r         i   •  i  A       •        i  /  His  fields 

him  tor  his  task.  A  single  step  from  his  and  tri- 
proper  fields,  of  course,  would  have  made 
him  ridiculous.  However  one  large  novelist 
differs  from  another,  we  can  at  least  conceive 
for  him  other  triumphs  than  those  he  wins. 
Irving  was  not  a  large  novelist,  and  our  thought 


292  American  Literature. 

cannot  imagine  in  his  case  any  triumph  different 
from  that  which  he  attained.  But  in  the  history 
of  the  fiction  of  his  native  land  his  place  cannot 
change.  Thus  far  only  Irving,  Cooper,  Poe  and 
Hawthorne  emerge  in  significance  from  the  multi 
plying  procession,  and  Irving  leads  the  list  in 
point  of  time.  Without  Cooper's  broad  con- 
structiveness,  he  at  least  avoided  Cooper's  pro 
lixity,  flatness,  irregularity,  and  preposterous 
excursions  in  the  service  of  patriotic  or  denomi 
national  propagandism.  Even  his  vine-around- 
the-oak  women  are  not  such  poor,  boneless 
creatures  as  those  in  the  pages  of  his  eminent 
contemporary.  Comparisons,  however,  are  not 
specially  illuminating  in  Irving's  case.  To  claim 
for  him  more  than  we  have  here  done  would  be 
folly  ;  to  assert  less  would  be  ignorance. 

Irving's    friend    and    fellow-worker,     Paulding, 

once  mentioned  almost  on  terms  of  equality  with 

the  author  of  "  The  Sketch-Book,"  is 

James  Kirke  . 

Paulding,  1779-   now  but  a  figure   of  the  past  in  the 

1860.  r       A  •  1  ™ 

story  of  American  letters,  born  a 
little  before  Irving,  he  survived  him,  dying  just 
previous  to  the  civil  war  ;  so  that  in  his  long  life 
time  as  a  writer  he  witnessed  the  entire  develop 
ment  of  the  national  mind  in  the  creative  fields 
of  literature.  William  Irving  was  Paulding's 
brother-in-law,  and  naturally  Paulding,  whose 
tastes  were  those  of  the  humorous  essayist  and 
sketch-maker,  became  a  useful  co-worker  on 
"Salmagundi,"  of  a  second  series  of  which  he  was 
the  sole  writer.  Such  literature  of  the  town,  of 


The  Belated  Beginning  of  Fiction.        293 

course,  could  not  endure  ;  of  all  the  rich  periodi 
cal  store  of  England  in  the  eighteenth  century  not 
a  dozen  essays,  outside  of  "  The  Spectator,"  are 
read  to-day ;  and  the  "  whim-whams "  of  these 
early  censors  of  New  York  society  do  not  interest 
a  city  that  has  already  forgotten  even  the  "  Poti- 
phar  Papers  "  of  Curtis,  written  a  long  generation 
later.  A  certain  added  dignity,  for  the  time,  was 
given  to  Paulding's  skits  and  sketches,  patriotic 
brochures,  life  of  Washington,  poems  and  novels, 
by  his  important  place  in  politics,  for  he  was  long 
navy-agent  in  New  York,  and  was  secretary  of 
the  navy  in  the  administration  of  President  Van 
Buren  (1838-1841).  But  the  name  of  his  best 
novel,  "  The  Dutchman's  Fireside,"  survived  the 
fleeting  fame  of  all  his  lesser  writings,  and  now-a- 
days  even  "  The  Dutchman's  Fireside  "  lingers  in 
the  mind  as  a  title  rather  than  a  thing.  Twenty 
years  ago  several  of  Paulding's  more  significant 
writings  were  neatly  reissued,  under  the  affec 
tionate  yet  discreet  editorship  of  his  son  ;  but 
they  had  lost  their  power  to  charm  or  interest  any 
considerable  number  of  readers.  The  characters 
in  his  novels  were  sometimes  drawn  with  conspic 
uous  freshness  and  strength,  and  there  was  swiftly 
flashing  fire  or  crackling  fun  in  some  of  his 
satires  of  the  ways  of  "John  Bull,"  or  praises  of 
the  words  and  doings  of  honest  "  Brother  Jona 
than."  As  far  as  local  theme  and  picture  were 
concerned, — watched  with  a  quick  eye  and  delin 
eated  with  a  patriotic  pen, — Paulding  was  a 
useful  fellow-worker  with  those  who  were  begin- 


294  American  Literature. 

ning  to  give  America  a  literature  of  her  own  ;  but 
something  more  is  needed  in  a  book  that  is  to 
live.  Paulding  wrote  just  as  he  thought,  without 
the  artistic  touch  and  without  painstaking  devel 
opment  ;  his  first  public  was  not  a  critical  one ; 
but  his  later  readers  properly  demanded  literary 
art,  rather  than  mere  spontaneity  and  vigor.  The 
spirit  of  time  and  place  must  indeed  be  caught, 
but  it  must  be  imprisoned  in  a  definite  artistic 
form  if  it  would  go  down  the  years.  One-half  of 
the  novels  of  Cooper  himself  are  deservedly 
neglected  for  the  same  reason  that  leaves  "  The 
Dutchman's  Fireside"  and  " Westward  Ho"  in 
the  shadow  of  the  procession  of  years, — which 
is,  in  brief,  that  they  proffer  an  original  creation 
ignobly  wrought.  Paulding  sacrificed  too  much 
to  the  wish  to  be  bright  and  readable.  This  wish 
he  attained,  for  certainly  "  The  Dutchman's  Fire 
side,"  with  all  its  queer  union  of  sentimentality 
and  playfulness,  and  its  occasional  absurdities  of 
sensationalism,  is  more  readable  than  the  worse 
half  of  Cooper's  novels,  which  sometimes  move 
with  an  elephantine  tread.  Let  us  not  blame  too 
severely  those  writers  who  sought  to  give  vivacity 
to  American  stories  and  sketches  between  1800 
and  1850;  for  assuredly  that  quality  had  been 
none  too  apparent  in  the  dull  theologico-philo- 
sophical  days  that  had  filled  up  so  large  a  part  of 
the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  in  the 
colonies.  Paulding  failed  honorably  in  a  pioneer's 
path,  wherein  he  lacked  for  the  most  part  both 


The  Belated  Beginning  of  Fiction.         295 

critics  and  models  ;  his  pursuits  were  not  wholly 
those  of  the  man-of-letters  ;  and  even  in  his  fail 
ures  he  did  some  temporary  service. 

When  the  Indian  peered  into  the  windows  that 
opened  on  "  The  Dutchman's  Fireside,"  he  was 
typical  of  the  advent  of  native-Americanism  in  a 
literature  which,  save  in  its  spontaneous  political 
outburst,  had  been  too  conservatively  colonial. 
He  frightened  the  little  girls  who  pored  over 
Paulding's  novel-pages  and  he  frightened  some  of 
the  timid  respectables  who  thought  nothing  good 
that  had  an  indigenous  character,  and  nothing 
bad  that  was  in  accord  with  the  approved  foreign 
models.  American  literature,  between  1775  and 
1825,  veered  swiftly  to  and  fro  between  humble 
subservience  to  European — that  is  English- 
leadership,  and  a  self-conscious  indignant 
"  Brother-Jonathanism"  that  really  was  a  different 
manifestation  of  the  same  feeling,  the  feeling  of 
verdancy.  But  another  sign,  less  conspicuous  at 
first  than  the  nationalism  of  Paulding  or  Cooper, 
was  slowly  beginning  to  appear.  This  was  the 
ability  to  write  smoothly  and  self-respectingly 
without  haste  or  local  assertiveness,  on  whatsoever 
theme  might  be  selected.  Such  ability  was  really 
the  cause  of  Irving's  international  success,  and 
the  general  lack  of  it,  as  has  also  just  been  said, 
made  Paulding  an  ephemeral  writer,  and  re 
manded  some  of  Cooper's  novels  to  a  low  plane 
of  merit.  This  seemingly  artless  grace,  this 
power  to  write  well,  was  illustrated  now  and  then 
in  the  lesser  and  anonymous  fiction  of  the  begin- 


296  American  Literature. 

ning  of  the  second  half-century  of  the  nation.  In 
"The  Talisman"  annual  for  1829  (edited  by  Bry 
ant,  Sands,  and  Verplanck)  is  an  excellent  illus 
tration  of  a  quiet  power  upon  which  American 
fiction  was  to  rely  for  its  greatest  triumphs.  This 
example  is  in  very  truth,  as  its  title  tells  us,  "  A 
"A  simple  Simple  Tale" — so  simple  that  it  almost 
seems  a  capital  parody  on  the  very  latest 
and  most  resultless  "realism"  of  our  day.  The 
eventless  story  of  a  man  and  a  woman,  in  a  plain 
village,  is  told  with  fine  finish,  and  that  is  all ;  but 
what  more  can  be  asked  of  thirty  small  pages  ? 
At  the  close  of  the  daintily-turned  little  story,  in 
my  copy,  there  is  written  in  the  minute  angular 
woman's-chirography  of  the  period  :  "Very  much 
like  W.  Irving";  and  so  it  is  ;  but  it  is  also  sug 
gestive  of  Gerard  de  Nerval,  or  any  other  exqui 
site  turner  of  rural  episodes  into  clear-cut  minor 
fiction.  To  take  a  subject  near  at  hand  ;  to  treat 
it  well,  with  deliberateness  of  art  and  restrained 
delicacy  of  humor ;  and  to  print  the  sketch  so 
made,  leaving  its  fate  to  take  care  of  itself — all 
this  was  precisely  what  was  significant  of  the  true 
beginning  of  American  fiction,  whether  it  was  to 
be  great  or  little.  That  beginning  had  at  length 
been  made  ;  and  though  its  quiet  progress  was  to 
be  profoundly  affected,  and  turned  forward  or 
aside,  by  the  individual  strength  of  a  force  like 
Cooper,  it  was  also  to  be  absorbed  and  magnified 
in  the  more  perfect  grace  of  a  Hawthorne. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER. 

IN  the  quartette  of  greatest  American  writers 
of  fiction  Cooper  occupies  a  sufficiently  secure 
place.  To  juvenile  or  hasty  readers  the  charm  of 
his  narratives  is  so  quickly  apparent  that  james 
it  is  uncritically  and  almost  thoughtlessly  Fec™p0err^ 
accepted  ;  while  to  maturer  or  more  phil-  1789-1851- 
osophic  minds  his  demerits  are  so  constantly  visi 
ble  that  some  deliberate  reflection  is  demanded 
before  his  essential  excellence  is  allowed.  A 
novel  by  Cooper  appears  almost  a  childish  per 
formance  when  placed  beside  a  novel  by  George 
Eliot  or  a  romance  by  Hawthorne.  The  preva 
lent  taste  calls  for  a  nicer  analysis  and  a  more 
delicate  touch  than  the  author  of  "  The  Deer- 
slayer"  could  bestow.  The  graces  of  art  appear 
but  irregularly  in  Cooper's  fiction,  and  never 
adorn  a  complete  novel.  His  success  has  always 
depended  upon  force  of  creation  and  vigor  of 
description  ;  and  herein  lies  his  proper  claim  to 
the  renown  so  long  granted.  Creation  and 
description,  in  a  novel,  are  best  when  adorned 
with  the  utmost  skill  of  art ;  but  no  one  can 
question  their  value,  even  when  crudely  set 
forth. 

Personally,  Cooper's  temper  was  nothing  less 

297 


298  American  Literature. 

than  ferocious ;  and  this  temper  he  sometimes 
allowed  to  lead  him  in  choice  of  themes  and  treat 
ment  of  plots.  Hence  the  long  list  of  his  books 
is  splashed  with  frequent  blots.  An  intense 
patriot,  he  contrived,  both  as  person  and  as 
author,  to  offend  readers  at  home  and  abroad.  A 
man  whose  application  of  Christian  principle 
should  first  have  been  made  upon  his  own  iras 
cible  character,  he  undertook  to  promulgate  the 
faith  in  the  form  of  polemic  fiction.  He  whose 
greatest  powers,  when  fully  displayed,  were  those 
of  a  strong  and  brilliant  novelist  of  the  trackless 
woods  and  seas,  essayed  to  write  a  ''fashionable" 
novel  of  society.  That  old-time  string  of  melo 
dramatic  adjectives,  "  odious,  insidious,  hideous, 
and  perfidious,"  was  assuredly  inapplicable  to  this 
great  honest  straightforward  force,  whose  career 
of  libel-suits  and  quarrels  would  best  be  described 
by  the  term  litigious.  When  free,  he  could  be  as 
destructive  as  Victor  Hugo's  loose  cannon  on 
shipboard  ;  when  self-contained  in  his  own  proper 
field,  no  American  could  dispute,  as  none  could 
equal,  his  solid  success.  By  his  triumphs  in  one 
place  he  made  us  forgive  and  forget  his  failures  in 
another.  Cooper  developed,  and  by  right  of  emi 
nent  domain  may  almost  be  said  to  have  discov 
ered,  the  wilder  American  field  for  fiction,  and  he 
is  the  sea-novelist  of  the  English  language. 

It  is  axiomatic  to  say  that  Cooper  was  a  fol 
lower  of  Scott.  But  this  means  no  more  than 
that  he  was  a  romantic  story-teller.  The  scenes 
and  characters  chosen  by  the  two  writers  could 


James  Fenimore  Cooper.  299 

hardly  be  more  unlike  than  they  are.  Cooper 
read  Scott,  as  did  everybody  ;  but  his  pages  are 
little  influenced  by  the  Wizard  of  the  The«Amer- 
North.  The  similarities  between  the  ican  Scott" 
two  writers  are  simply  those  due  to  the  fact  that 
each  made  a  romantic  portrayal  of  humanity, 
noble  and  base,  cultured  and  savage,  in  chivalrous 
adventure,  in  exciting  plot  and  counterplot,  and  in 
manly  and  womanly  affection  and  ambition.  As 
well  call  Victor  Hugo  the  Scott  of  France  as 
apply  to  this  most  characteristic  American  of  his 
time  any  term  implying  servile  indebtedness. 

The  prodigality  of  Cooper's  pen,  after  it  had 
fairly  set  to  work,  was  a  mark  of  the  English 
fiction  of  the  century.  Half-a-dozen  novelists 
might  be  named,  in  Great  Britain  and  prodigaiity 
the  United  States,  who  have  among  infiction- 
themselves  written  more  stories  than  a  single 
reader  can  profitably  absorb  in  a  lifetime.  That 
fertility  which  in  Scott  was  due  to  pride  and 
consequent  financial  need,  and  which  in  such 
writers  as  Trollope  and  Mrs.  Oliphant  is  mere 
inveterateness  of  literary  habit,  sprang  in  Cooper 
from  the  lusty  wealth  of  his  vigorous  intellectual 
nature,  to  which  labor  was  scarcely  more  than 
recreation.  A  midshipman  in  youth,  he  was  a 
hearty  literary  adventurer  in  middle  life,  merely 
transferring  to  pen  and  ink  that  chivalric  com- 
bativeness  and  fondness  for  novelty  that  would 
have  made  him  a  discoverer,  a  crusader,  or  a 
pirate,  a  few  centuries  before. 

This  element  in   his  personal   character  readily 


300  American  Literature. 

accounts  for  his  literary  over-productiveness,  and 
for  the  irregular  value  of  his  long  list  of  books. 
Let  no  one  go  to  Cooper,  as  to  Hawthorne,  for 
instruction  in  the  arts  of  style.  Pages,  chapters, 

and  whole  volumes  will  be  found  without 
ir?e°gPuTarity  difficulty,  which  may  quickly  be  separated 

from  the  valuable  part  of  the  author's 
product.  Words  are  sometimes  fairly  thrown 
away ;  a  single  idea  is  expanded  at  tiresome 
length  ;  and  the  narrative  sadly  drags,  when  that 
narrative  should  be  all  in  all.  Prolixity  and 
tediousness  are  serious  faults  in  one  whose  lit 
erary  business  is  to  tell  a  tale.  Cooper's  tedious- 
ness  differs  from  Dickens'  in  that  the  latter, 
actively  turns  and  returns  in  the  same  corner 
of  a  field,  while  the  former  seems  to  try  to  move, 
but  with  sluggish  steps.  Cooper  has  been  termed 
a  "  panoramic  "  novelist.  Everyone  who  has  sat 
in  childhood  before  one  of  those  innocuous  and 
mildly  instructive  entertainments  which  preceded 
the  days  of  the  stereopticon,  well  remember  how 
the  simple  machinery  would  at  times  halt  and 
finally  get  hopelessly  caught,  so  that  the  beholder 
became  wearied  of  an  immovable  picture,  while 
the  poor  manipulator  was  vainly  endeavoring  to 
remedy  the  evil.  So  it  sometimes  seems  in  the 
case  of  Cooper's  panoramas.  At  such  times  the 
energetic  author,  like  the  panorama-showman,  is 
as  vexed  as  his  audience,  but  hardly  knows  how  to 
proceed.  There  are  long  delays,  of  course,  in  any- 
career  of  adventure  ;  one  complains  only  when 


James  Fenimore  Cooper.  301 

they  are   introduced   into    the    printed   page    not 
from  artistic  intention  but  from  defect  of  creation. 

The  mature  student  of  Cooper's  works,  there 
fore,  finds  at  the  start  a  sufficiently  serious  array 
of  demerits.  Cooper  was  fluent  but  not  artistic  ;- 
he  wrote  hurriedly,  carelessly,  and  therefore  too 
voluminously  ;  he  wasted  his  strength  and  his 
manuscripts  in  "  patriotic,"  political,  and  personal 
squabbles  ;  he  failed  almost  completely  as  a  social 
painter  and  as  a  creator  of  "  novels  with  a  pur 
pose,"  theological,  satirical,  or  other.  He  could 
not  undertake  with  the  slightest  confidence  of 
success  the  delineation  of  women  or  children. 
The  ordinary  class  of  cultured  men  he  portrayed 
better,  but  even  here  his  touch  was  insecure. 
Instead  of  recognizing  his  defects,  and  trying 
either  to  correct  them  or  to  modify  his  choice  of 
themes  and  his  methods  of  treatment,  he  fell  into 
an  inveterate  habit  of  replying  to,  or  sueing  at 
law,  those  who  had  criticised  him.  The  "  grim  " 
humor  of  some  of  the  characters  in  his  books 
seemed  unfortunately  lacking  in  his  own  charac 
ter  ;  its  presence  would  have  saved  him  from 
many  mistakes. 

As  a  preliminary  to  an  examination  and  hearty 
recognition  of  Cooper's  great  and  enduring  merits, 
it  will  therefore  be  well,  at  the  start,  to  eliminate 
the  unimportant  titles  from  his  long  list  of  pub 
lished  writings.  His  contributions  to  His  minor 
periodical  literature,  with  the  exception  of  wntinss- 
his  naval  sketches,  were  few  and  non-significant, 
for  he  early  entered  upon  a  career  of  popularity 


;O2  s±memcan  juiieraiure. 


which  spared  him  the  necessity  or  temptation  to 
write  miscellaneous  minor  sketches.  He  had  no 
capacity  for  the  production  of  short  stories,  which 
he  very  wisely  left  unattempted,  with  one  unfortu 
nate  exception  ;  and  in  his  day  the  monthly  maga 
zines  of  America  were  unable  to  pay  high  prices 
for  serial  fiction.  When  he  wished  to  address  his 
public  briefly  on  any  theme  of  earnest  exhortation 
or  bitter  reply,  his  words  were  more  direct  and 
forcible  than  ornate  ;  as  a  letter-writer  and  pam 
phleteer  he  thought  of  effect  rather  than  means, 
nor  did  he  fully  realize  how  important  is  style  to 
Cooper  as  con-  a  Junius,  not  less  than  to  an  Addison 
troversiahst.  or  an  iryjng.  HQ  was  certainly  suffi 
ciently  violent,  and  sufficiently  comprehensive  in 
his  choice  of  subjects  for  attack ;  he  never  learned 
to  avoid  the  rhetorical  error  of  attempting  too 
much.  Once  aroused,  he  hurried  along,  too  fast 
and  too  far,  confounding  in  his  onslaught  the  just 
and  the  unjust,  the  part  and  the  whole.  With 
him,  "Hints  on  the  Social  and  Civic  Relations  of 
the  United  States  of  America  "  easily  became  pos 
itive  statements  of  the  demoniac  tendencies  of  the 
entire  newspaper  press  of  his  country,  which  was 
poisoning  the  national  moral  sense,  and  was 
existing  but  as  an  instrument  of  wickedness. 
James  Gates  Percival  once  launched  "  Salmoneus- 
thunderbolts  ....  at  the  comfortable  little  city 
of  Hartford,  because  the  poet  fancied  that  the 
inhabitants  thereof  did  not  like  him  or  his  verses 
so  much  as  he  himself  did ;  "*  and  politely  penned 
the  following  request : 

*  James  Russell  Lowell,  "  My  Study  Windows,"  182. 


James  Fenimore   Cooper.  303 

"Wrapped  in  sheets  of  gory  lightning, 

While  cursed  night  hags  ring  thy  knell, 
May  the  arm  of  vengeance  bright'ning, 
O'er  thee  wave  the  sword  of  hell ! 

"  May  a  sudden  inundation 

Rise  in  many  a   roaring  wave, 
And  with  hurried  devastation 

Whelm  thy  thousands  in  the  grave. 

"When  the  flood,  in  fury  swelling, 

Heaves  their  corpses  on  the  shore, 
May  fell  hygens,  madly  yelling, 

Tear  their  limbs  and  drink  their  gore." 

Cooper,  as  a  controversialist,  was  scarcely  less 
explicit  in  the  utterance  of  his  wishes,  which 
also  found  expression  in  his  books  of  travel,  now 
wholly  unread  and  justly  forgotten,  and  in  his 
satirical  "  international "  novels.  Let  him  who 
wishes  to  explore  the  depths  into  which  a  great 
American  writer  fell  when  he  sought  to  satirize 
the  faults  of  his  actual  country,  and  to  portray 
his  ideal  men  and  women,  endeavor  to  read 
that  remarkable  production,  "Home  as  Found." 
Cooper,  in  the  very  fatuity  of  foolhardiness,  even 
endeavored  to  follow  Swift  in  a  more  general  sat 
ire,  and  "The  Monikins"  was  the  result.  It  must 
be  remembered,  however,  that  the  sentimentalism 
of  the  day,  when  it  turned  sour,  was  very  acetic 
indeed  ;  and  that  too  large  a  part  of  the  English 
press,  as  well  as  of  the  American,  showed  toward 
Cooper  a  virulent  injustice  that  was  nothing  less 
than  indecent,  and  would  not  now-a-days  be  toler 
ated  for  a  moment.  This  injustice  was  repeat- 


304  American  Literature. 

edly  displayed  by  some  of  the  gravest  and  weight 
iest  periodicals  of  the  language,  sample  utterances 
of  which  may  be  found  in  Lounsbury's  excellent 
life  of  Cooper.  But  if  Cooper's  critics  lost  their 
manners  in  their  attacks,  Cooper  himself  lost  his 
senses  in  his  replies.  However,  if  there  is  one 
thing  in  the  world  which  Time  buries  more 
quickly  and  more  deeply  than  a  book-review,  it  is 
an  author's  reply  to  that  review.  The  furious 
controversies,  whether  pro  or  con,  which  were  for 
so  many  years  connected  with  Cooper's  personal 
character,  records  of  American  and  European 
sight-seeing  (calculated,  as  by  the  very  perversity 
of  unintention,  to  exasperate  Americans  and 
Europeans  alike),  and  comments  on  American 
naval  history,  are  impartially  consigned  to  the 
secure  oblivion  of  some  dusty  file  of  defunct  news 
papers. 

A  more  unkind  neglect  has  also  fallen  upon 
Cooper's  "  History  of  the  Navy  of  the  United 
States  of  America"  (1839;  condensed  in  1841), 
and  "  Lives  of  Distinguished  American  Naval 
Officers"  (1846).  For  the  preparation  of  these 
works  Cooper  possessed  somewhat  unusual  quali- 
Navai  history  fications.  Early  familiar  with  the  sea 
and  biography.  and  wjth  the  American  navy,  he  never 

lost  his  interest  in  either.  Marine  adventure,  fur 
thermore,  was  a  theme  which  no  one  could  treat 
more  vigorously  and  effectively  than  he ;  and 
many  pages  of  these  two  works  display  the  char 
acteristics  of  descriptive  style  which  have  made 
Cooper,  and  not  Marryat,  the  great  sea-novelist. 


James  Fenimore  Cooper.  305 

The  volumes,  furthermore,  were  by  no  means  a 
superficial  gloss  upon  carelessly  gathered  facts; 
Cooper  sought  his  materials  at  first  hand,  and  in 
their  use  fell  into  no  fiercer  controversies  than 
have  beset  the  literary  and  personal  path  of  the 
chief  historian  of  the  United  States,  though,  in 
Cooper's  case,  these  controversies,  as  usual,  got 
into  the  courts  of  law.  He  sought  the  truth,  pub 
lished  it  without  fear  or  favor,  and  defended  it 
when  questioned,  earnestly  but  with  unusual  grav 
ity  and  self-possession.  The  exact  reason  for  the 
public  inattention  toward  this  history  is  not  read 
ily  to  be  stated  ;  perhaps  the  decline  of  the  Amer 
ican  commerce  and  navy,  only  to  be  revived  by 
broader  legislation  or  some  great  war,  may  have 
something  to  do  with  the  national  neglect  of  that 
which  once  was  a  matter  of  intensest  patriotic 
pride.  A  nearer  and  more  obvious  reason  lies  in 
the  fact  that,  after  all,  only  the  great  histories  live 
— those  in  which  a  noble  theme  is  deliberately 
handled  with  patient  research,  with  philosophic 
spirit,  and  with  artistic  finish.  Cooper  displayed 
the  first  quality  in  due  measure  and  the  second  in 
a  degree  surprising  in  view  of  his  usual  tempta 
tions  and  failures  ;  but  in  the  third  his  haste  de 
nied  him  such  successes  as  were  not  won  by  his 
natural  powers  in  spontaneous  action.  At  a  time 
when  Irving's  histories  and  biographies,  for  rea 
sons  elsewhere  discussed,  are  fading  rather  than 
brightening,  it  is  not  strange  that  Cooper,  as  his 
torian,  fares  yet  worse. 

Turning  finally   to  Cooper's    novels,  issued    in 


20 


306  American  Literature. 

several  competing  editions,  read  by  eager  thou 
sands,  and  forming,  practically,  the  sole  basis  upon 
The  lesser  which  rests  his  present  fame,  and  upon 
novels.  which  all  future  claims  for  prominence 
must  depend,  we  find  that  some  of  these  also 
may  quite  readily  be  dismissed  from  the  list  of 
those  entitled  to  the  most  respectful  critical  men 
tion  ;  or  may  be  abandoned  with  the  flotsam 
and  jetsam  of  the  literary  tides.  Such,  it  seems  to 
me,  are  "  The  Wept  of  Wish-ton-Wish,"  "  Afloat 
and  Ashore,"  "  Miles  Wallingford,"  "  Satanstoe," 
"The  Chainbearer,"  "The  Redskins,"  "  Wyan- 
dotte,"  "Wing  and  Wing,"  "The  Two  Admir 
als,"  "  Homeward  Bound,"  "  The  Crater,"  "Jack 
Tier,"  4<  The  Sea  Lions,"  "The  Oak  Openings," 
"The  Heidenmauer,"  "The  Headsman,"  and 
"  Mercedes  of  Castile."  These  seventeen  novels, 
though  in  themselves  sufficient  to  justify  the 
fame  of  some  lesser  novelists,  are  in  plan  or 
execution  inferior  to  the  masterpieces  which 
chiefly  lend  honor  to  Cooper's  name.  As  in  the 
Waverley  Novels  themselves,  we  find  that  invet 
erate  inventiveness  and  rapidity  of  composition 
naturally  result  in  great  irregularity  of  product. 
"  The  Wept  of  Wish-ton-Wish  "  is  worth  saving 
if  but  for  its  lovely  title — as  musical  and  as  char 
acteristically  American  as  Kennedy's  "  Swallow 
Barn."  This  title,  however,  proved  as  unwelcome 
to  the  foreign  reprinters  as  did  that  of  Haw 
thorne's  "  Marble  Faun,"  and  was  similarly 
thrown  aside.  The  theme  of  the  book — and  the 
secret  of  its  failure — is  to  be  found  in  its  title  as 


James  Fenimore  Cooper.  307 

changed  in  France  :  "  The  Puritans  of  America." 
Cooper  was  always  feeble  in  satire ;  and  his  New 
England  stones,  even  "  Lionel  Lincoln,"  are 
untrue  to  the  local  character  or  ineffective  in 
its  delineation.  Into  Puritanism,  which  he  not 
unnaturally  hated,  Cooper  had  no  real  insight ; 
and  even  a  hater  must  understand  if  he  would 
effectively  denounce.  "  The  Redskins,"  too, 
proffers  at  the  start  an  atttactive  name,  but  fol 
lows  it  with  hundreds  of  pages  in  which,  as  in  its 
immediate  predecessors  "Satanstoe  "  and  "The 
Chainbearer,"  bombast,  haste  and  unmerited 
contempt  for  New  Englanders  disfigure  and 
almost  destroy  the  would-be  delineations  of  New 
York  colonial  life  and  adventure  in  the  eighteenth 
century.  In  addition  to  his  frequent  attempts  to 
ridicule  Congregationalism  and  magnify  Episco 
pacy,  Cooper  was  here  endeavoring  to  make 
patroon  landlords  agreeable  and  "  anti-renters " 
odious.  Now,  however  attractive  may  be  Epis 
copacy  or  paternalism  in  comparison  with  Puritan 
ism  or  anarchistic  agrarianism,  it  cannot  be  said 
that  Cooper's  controversial  defences  were  other 
than  injurious  to  the  side  he  espoused.  It  is 
true  that  "  Satanstoe  "  was  not  lacking  in  force, 
and  that  the  denunciations,  in  these  stories,  of 
the  selfish  ferocity  of  ignorant  communism,  and 
thieving  no-rent  land-tenure  in  general,  are  in 
structive  to-day;  but  one  regrets  that  Cooper 
did  not  restrain  and  command  his  powers  until 
they  should  strike  terribly  against  a  terrible  evil, 


308  American  Literature. 

and  not  waste  their  force  in  the  moment  of  the 
stroke. 

"  Satanstoe "  had  been  preceded  by  the  four 
volumes  of  "Afloat  and  Ashore";  or  "  The 
adventures  of  Miles  Wallingford," — the  third 
Series  of  an<^  fourth  of  which  are  now  reissued 
novels,  under  the  name  of  their  hero.  It  was 
followed  by  "The  Chainbearer,"  in  which  the 
evil  deeds  of  a  Puritan  product  are  further  elab 
orated.  Judging  by  this  loosely  connected  series 
one  would  say  that  the  prevalent  fashion  of  dove 
tailing  different  works  of  fiction  by  the  introduc 
tion  of  the  same  characters,  scenes  or  ideas  was 
no  element  of  strength  in  Cooper;  but  we  shall 
see  that  in  the  "  Leather-Stocking"  series  it  was 
connected  with  his  noblest  and  more  characteristic 
success.  Only  when  Cooper  misjudged  his  proper 
field  and  powers,  or  slighted  his  task,  did  he  pro 
duce  those  works  which  long  damaged  his  repu 
tation  and  are  most  advantageous  in  obscurity. 

In  those  of  Cooper's  novels  which  have  to  do 
with  the  sea,  such  as  "  The  Two  Admirals,"  or 
"  Wing  and  Wing,"  the  reader  is  interested  in 
the  adventures  described  but  not  in  the  charac 
ters  portrayed.  It  seems  strange,  but  it  is  true, 
that  the  creator  of  the  individual  and  almost  im 
mortal  character  of  Natty  Bumppo  was  content 
to  people  his  pages  with  preposterous  fools ;  in 
consequential  heroes  ;  and  timid,  blushing  faint 
ing  "  female  "  Turveydrops.  As  far  as  the  char 
acters  are  concerned,  the  reader  of  "  Home 
ward  Bound"  is  almost  sorry  that  they  sur- 


James  Fenimore  Cooper.  309 

vived  to  visit  "  Home  as  Found."  But  the 
events  and  episodes,  the  chases  and  battles  and 
storms  and  disciplines  of  "  Homeward  Bound," 
"The  Two  Admirals,"  or  "Wing  and  Wing," 
and  the  action  in  the  land  novels  attract  those 
who  are  willing  to  endure  Cooper's  tiresome  pre 
faces  and  long-winded  arguments  or  dogmatic 
ipse  dixit  proofs  that  a  Roman  Cath-  Cooper  as 
olic  should  not  marry  an  infidel  ;  that  an  d<>gmatist. 
Episcopal  damsel  cannot  safely  bestow  her  hand 
upon  a  High  Arian ;  that  the  Congregational 
churches  of  New  England  include  hypocritical 
rascals  in  their  lists  of  members ;  or  even  that,  as 
in  the  preposterous  finale  to  "The  Crater,"  a 
returning  Episcopalian  may  find  his  former  home, 
a  Pacific  reef,  engulfed  with  all  its  evil  sectarian 
population,  whether  Friend,  Baptist,  Methodist  or 
Presbyterian, — so  that  this  excellent  liturgist  may 
triumphantly  exclaim  in  Swinburne's  words  over 
his  "  Forsaken  Garden,"  that  he  has  lived 

"Till  the  slow  sea  rise  and  the  sheer  cliff  crumble,    u 

Till  terrace  and  meadow  the  deep  gulfs  drink,         \P 
Till  the  strength  of  the  waves  of  the  high  tides  humble 

The  fields  that  lessen,  the  rocks  that  shrink; 
Here  now  in  his  triumph  where  all  things  falter, 

Stretched  out  on  the  spoils  that  his  own  hands  spread, 
As  a  god  self-slain  on  his  own  strange  altar, 
Death  lies  dead." 

Meanwhile  the  greater  part  of  Cooper's  public 
prefers  his  accounts  of  the  French  privateer  to  his 
defences  of  the  Athanasian  creed,  and  solaces 
itself  with  the  author's  vigor  and  vitality,  at  the 


310  American  Literature. 

expense  of  his  long  prefaces,  diatribes  against 
New  England,  laudations  of  placid  patroonism,  or 
violent  commendations  of  the  American  system 
at  its  best,  versus  the  effete  despotisms  of  Europe. 
The  various  novels  just  mentioned  were  one  and 
all  read — and  are  still  read,  if  at  all — as  stories 
simply.  That  they  could  survive  their  personages 
and  their  preachments  indicates  that,  beneath  all 
their  rubbish,  some  vital  spark  must  have  been 
steadily  smouldering.  But  the  lesser  novels  of 
Cooper,  in  fact,  are  now  little  read  by  mature  and 
critical  minds;  their  public  is,  as  I  have  said,  for 
the  most  part  juvenile  and  unthoughtful,  com 
posed  of  those  who  "  like  "  the  better  stories,  and 
wish  to  continue  the  pleasure  they  have  found. 
When  a  discreet  reader,  familiar,  at  least  in  part, 
with  Hawthorne,  Dickens,  Thackeray,  George 
Eliot,  Scott  and  Cooper  at  his  best,  takes  up  one 
of  them,  some  impression  of  inanity,  verbosity, 
prejudice,  or  propagandism  can  hardly  be  avoided. 
As  he  reads  their  pages  he  will  be  half  ready  to 
declare  Cooper  an  overpraised  figure  of  the  past, 
whose  books  have  none  but  a  relative  interest  or 
importance. 

But  now  we  turn  to  the  golden  side  and  the 
nobler  books,  and  find  their  merits  heightened  by 
His  great  tne  frank  contrast  we  have  made.  For- 
merits.  gotten  are  the  fury  of  controversy,  the  lit 
igation  of  libel  suits,  the  crude  satires  at  the 
expense  of  social  errors,  the  well-meant  de 
fences  of  the  ever-attractive  Protestant  Episcopal 
Church,  the  ill-meant  vituperation  of  the  Puritan 


James  Fenimore  Cooper.  311 

New  Englanders.  There  comes  into  full  view  the 
characteristic  story-teller  of  American  woods  and 
waters,  he  who  caught  and  delineated  in  romantic 
novels  the  adventurous  spirit  of  unfettered  men 
and  unmeasured  Nature.  Cooper  is,  over  all,  his 
country's  novelist  of  action,  and  action  ever 
charms  when  analysis  wearies  or  invention  flags. 
Antedating  Hawthorne  in  fame,  surpassing  Irving 
at  least  in  vigor  of  stroke  and  extent  of  field,  and 
standing  utterly  aside  from  Poe,  Cooper  first  wore 
the  novelist's  crown  in  lands  west  of  the  Atlantic. 
His  mind  was  remarkably  fertile  in  planning 
plots  of  adventure,  and  sometimes  in  elaborating 
those  plots  so  that  incident  succeeded  incident 
without  wearisomeness  or  lack  of  novelty  or  prob 
ability.  It  has  been  said  that  Cooper  had  no 
style ;  but  if  his  fiery  and  thrilling  episodes  of 
adventure  on  sea  or  land  are  not  successful 
because  he  was  a  master  of  the  story-teller's  style, 
his  readers  have  been  remarkably  influenced  by 
some  literary  power  as  yet  unnamed.  Had  he 
paused  longer  in  search  of  words,  his  action,  swift 
in  its  best  passages,  would  have  dragged ;  but  in 
such  passages  he  does  pause  long  enough  to 
choose  words  that  fit  the  purpose  in  hand.  The 
storms  and  calms  of  the  ocean  and  the  "  inland 
seas  "  of  the  great  American  lakes  ;  the  fortunes 
of  merchant-ship,  privateer  or  man-of-war ;  the 
peculiar  humor  of  certain  vividly-drawn  characters 
previously  unfamiliar;  the  sombre  North  Amer 
ican  Indian  in  all  his  majesty  and  treachery;  the 
Pathfinder  of  the  woods,  trackless  to  all  but  him ; 


312  American  Literature. 

the  infinite  wealth  of  the  rude  life  of  the  rifle  and 
the  wigwam  —  of  these  James  Fenimore  Cooper 
was  a  master.  Others  may  yet  challenge  and  sur 
pass  his  success  as  a  sea-novelist,  though,  in  these 
days  of  swift  steamships,  iron-clads,  and  long-range 
cannon,  none  has  yet  done  so.  But  as  the  Indian 
character  becomes  more  civilized  and  the  Indian 
home  moves  farther  westward,  none  will  repeat 
the  triumphs  of  the  creator  of  Chingachgook  and 
Uncas,  and  of  their  Caucasian  counterpart  the 
Pathfinder.  The  last-named,  and  his  environ 
ment,  are  not  to  be  criticised  ;  they  are  to  be 
admired. 

The     five    "Leather-Stocking     Tales"—  "  The 

Pioneers,  or,  The  Sources  of  the  Susquehanna"  ; 

"The  Last  of  the  Mohicans,  a  Narrative  of  1757"; 

"  The    Prairie,  a  Tale  "  ;    "  The    Path- 

The  "  Leather-  ' 

stocking         finder,    or,    The    Inland    Sea";    "The 

• 


Deerslayer,  or,  The  First  War-Path"— 
were  written  between  1823  and  1841,  "  in  a  very 
desultory  and  inartificial  manner,"  said  Cooper  in 
his  final  preface  to  the  series.  Having  terminated 
the  career  of  Leather-Stocking  in  "  The  Prairie," 
and  laid  him  in  his  grave,  the  author  was  induced 
by  "  a  latent  regard  for  this  character  to  resusci 
tate  him  in  '  The  Pathfinder.'  "  The  logical  order 
of  the  five,  centreing  around  this  hero,  is  "  The 
Deerslayer,"  "The  Last  of  the  Mohicans,"  "The 
Pathfinder,"  "  The  Pioneers,"  and  "The  Prairie." 
Cooper  himself  perceived  that  "  if  anything  from 
the  pen  of  the  writer  of  these  romances  is  to  out 
live  himself,  it  is,  unquestionably,  the  series  of 


James  Fenimore  Cooper.  313 

'  The  Leather-Stocking  Tales.' '  He  recognized 
their  faults  of  haste  and  lack  of  harmony,  and  was 
well  aware  of  the  thoughtless  way  in  which  his 
books  were  devoured  at  the  time,  without  refer 
ence  to  lasting  value.  Nor  did  he  prophesy  for 
himself  with  any  certainty,  even  here,  a  survival 
in  literature  when  novelty  should  have  become 
worn  away.  But  his  "  man  of  the  forest,"  though 
"  purely  a  creation,"  proved  to  be  a  creation  indig 
enous,  forceful,  broadly  human,  and  therefore 
perennial.  In  his  creation,  too,  Cooper  exerted 
all  his  own  strength,  and  also  relied  upon  an 
essentially  fine  and  often  deliberate  art — displayed 
even  in  this  preface,  by  far  the  best  he  ever  wrote. 
The  hard  facts  of  life  and  the  wiry  nature  of  the 
hero  were  held  up  in  the  poetic  view  of  the  imag 
ination.  Human  nature,  in  unfettered  nobility 
and  a  fresh  environment,  and  yet  with  human  sins 
and  foibles,  was  nobly  painted.  So  it  was  with 
Cooper's  pictures  of  the  Indians  who  were  Natty 
Bumppo's  fellows  and  unconscious  teachers.  "  It 
is  the  privilege  of  all  writers  of  fiction,"  he  justly 
said  and  constantly  felt,  "  more  particularly  when 
their  works  aspire  to  the  elevation  of  romances,  to 
present  the  beau-ideal  of  their  characters  to  the 
reader."  Cooper  was  a  large  creator  and  a  con 
scious  artist,  who  perceived  a  "  beau-ideal "  even 
in — especially  in — Bumppo  and  the  redskins. 
The  American  note,  isolated  inheritance  working 
freshly,  was  clearly  struck  in  this  definite  and 
lastingly  valuable  quintette  of  romantic  novels. 
Cooper's  large  and  human  heart  beat  responsive 


314  American  Literature. 

to  truth.  He  felt  what  he  saw  ;  and  he  had  the 
national  faculty  of  "  thinking  straight  and  seeing 
clear."  Therefore  he  was  both  picturesque  and 
pathetic — how  often  do  those  adjectives  combine  ! 
—in  his  delineations  of  a  fading  troop  and  a  pass 
ing  time.  Instead  of  the  artificial  Gothicism  of 
"The  Castle  of  Otranto,"  the  sentimentality  of 
"  The  Man  of  Feeling,"  the  portentous  romanti 
cism  of  "  The  Mysteries  of  Udolpho,"  or,  in  gen 
eral,  "  Man  as  he  Is  Not,"  Cooper  gave  us  a  ver 
itable  "Simple  Story,"  combining  "Nature  and 
Art,"  in  a  "  Romance  of  the  Forest,"  as  truly 
though  not  as  perfectly  as  did  Goldsmith  in  the 
inimitable  "  Vicar."  * 

Cooper's  huntsman — brave,  cool,  slightly  sus 
picious  and  slow  of  word  and  act,  but  honest, 
manly  and  human — was  more  indigenous  and 
more  widely  interesting  to  his  countrymen  than 
Irving's  Rip  Van  Winkle,  Ichabod  Crane,  or 
Knickerbocker  Dutchmen.  His  Indians,  too, 
were  surely  of  the  soil,  though  not  of  the  race  that 
was  producing  a  native  literature.  Fortunately 
Cooper's  greatest  strength  lay  in  the  creations 
which  were  most  needed,  most  interesting,  and 
therefore  most  valuable.  The  scenes  of  domestic 
fiction,  or  its  miscellaneous  characters,  could  be 
Cooper's  better  painted  by  other  hands ;  therein 
domam.  Cooper  failed  outright  or  achieved  success 
but  at  random.  His  proper  domain  was  the 
borderland  between  barbarism  and  civilization. 

*  The  very  titles  of  these  and  others  in  Mrs.  Barbauld's  "  British  IVov- 
elists"  series  are  historically  significant. 


James  Fenimore  Cooper.  315 

In  "The  Spy"  and  "  Lionel  Lincoln,"  dealing 
with  the  Revolution,  Cooper  also  exploited  the 
field  of  local  history,  and  so  far  as  adventure  and 
action  were  concerned  he  was  not  unsuccessful. 
Like  a  trained  hound,  his  powers  and  beauty  were 
visible  in  motion  rather  than  at  rest ;  in  conflict, 
not  in  home-life.  "The  Red  Rover"  and  "The 
Pilot,"  of  the  sea-tales,  excel  in  their 

,          11-1.       Sea-tales. 

encounters  and  escapes ;  they  halt  in  their 
love-episodes  and  conversational  discussions. 
The  "problems  of  life,"  in  the  English  or  the 
Russian  sense,  seldom  troubled  Cooper;  and 
when  they  did,  they  troubled  his  readers  vastly 
more.  We  go  to  him  with  the  demand  :  "Tell  us 
a  story,5'  not  with  the  plea  :  "  Help  us  in  solving 
the  riddle  of  existence."  Cooper,  therefore, 
remains  the  American  story-teller,  the  national 
novelist  of  the  days  before  analysis  became  fash 
ionable.  After  all,  most  novelists'  fame 

Our  novelist 

is  built  up  by  large  constructiveness  and   of  action,  on 

,  ,  .1-1  o-i  •  land  or  sea. 

not  by  decorative  details.  1  he  major 
ity  of  readers  is  not  composed  of  analysts  and 
critics,  constantly  bothered  with  the  why  and  the 
how.  Cooper  created  stories  which  conquered 
their  readers,  and  he  succeeded  on  the  old-fash 
ioned  lines.  After  all,  a  novel  must  entertain, 
and  a  cloud  of  witnesses  attest  Cooper's  entertain- 
ingness.  His  most  prominent  quality,  as  a 
novelist,  was  wholesome  independence  of  thought  - 
and  speech,  a  quality  that  lies  at  the  bottom  of 
the  success  of  the  masters,  Cervantes  and  Le  Sage, 
De  Foe  and  Goldsmith.  Those  story-tellers,  too, 


316  American  Literature. 

were  honestly  national,  as  was  Cooper.  Inde 
pendence  and  nationality  are  not  enough  to  make 
a  novel,  but  when  the  bases  of  constructive  power 
they  are  sure  to  promote  literary  triumph.  And 
careless  largeness  is  more  attractive,  in  the  long 
run,  than  careful  pettiness.  If  we  must  have  but 
one,  let  it  be  the  first.  Therein  is  the  indispensa 
ble  element  in  the  "  Leather-Stocking  Tales," 
which  makes  us  refuse  to  give  them  up,  or  to 
challenge  their  right  to  their  individual  place  in 
literature  and  in  our  favor.  Natty  Bumppo  and 
Long  Tom  Coffin  are  better  known  to  us,  more 
real  personalities,  than  half  our  cousins.  The 
last  sea-fight ;  the  whale-capture,  or  the  killing  of 
the  panther ;  the  wild  justice  of  the  wronged 
Indian's  vengeance ;  the  fierce  plot  and  counter 
plot  of  the  contestants  in  the  Revolution,  or  of 
the  pioneers  of  France  and  England  in  the  new 
world  ;  and  all  the  parti-colored  panorama  of  the 
American  man  in  action,  cannot  cease  to  charm 
those  who  have  blood  in  their  veins  and  muscles 
in  their  arms. 

Even  in  our  recognition  of  Cooper's  peculiar 
and  unquestioned  triumphs  there  steals  anew 
the  question:  How  can  these  triumphs  be  con 
sistent  with  the  failures  that  accompanied  them  ? 
The  creator  of  the  "  Leather-Stocking  Tales " 
began  his  career  of  authorship  with  the  novel 
"  Precaution,"  and  closed  it  with  "  The  Ways  of 
the  Hour."  In  both,  as  in  so  many  intermediate 
books,  symmetry,  verisimilitude,  and  progressive 
interest  are  precisely  the  lacking  qualities.  Like 


James  Fenimore  Cooper.  317 

a  hundred  eminent  authors,  Cooper  could  not 
measure  his  weakness,  though  he  could,  and  did, 
rightly  estimate  his  strength.  "  The  Spy,"  "  The 
Pioneers,"  "The  Pilot,"  "Lionel  Lincoln,"  "The 
Last  of  the  Mohicans,"  "  The  Prairie,"  and  "  The 
Red  Rover,"  followed  immediately  upon  the  pub 
lication  of  "  Precaution,"  in  consecutive  order,  and 
in  the  eight  years  including  1821  and  1828.  I 
know  not  where  to  find,  outside  of  Scott's  work, 
a  greater  example  of  affluence  in  the  production 
of  fiction.  In  haste  and  uncertainty,  with  no 
friendly  coterie  of  discreet  advisers,  with  a  public 
indifferent  at  home  and  hostile  abroad,  Cooper 
wrote  and  published  that  vigorous  and  enduring 
book  which  brought  before  us  the  manly,  individ 
ual  American  character  of  Harvey  Birch.  Single- 
handed,  he  gave  us  a  novel  and  a  hero, 

.1.1.        .  '     "The  Spy." 

because  the  power  within  him  lay.  1  he 
instant  success  he  won  was  a  proper  stimulant 
toward  the  production  of  "  The  Pioneers."  That 
novel  "drags"  seriously  in  the  hands  of  those 
of  us  who  read  it  to-day ;  but  it  calls  for  no  strong 
effort  of  imagination  to  see  how  enthusiastically, 
in  1823,  we  would  have  hailed  its  germs  of  the 
"  Leather-Stocking "  development,  in  full  and 
final  form.  The  literary  possibilities  of  the  hero, 
of  the  Indians,  and  of  the  opening  of  the  new 
American  land  evidently  lay  in  the  author's  mind, 
who  turned  from  the  Revolution  to  the  forest- 
clearing  with  the  spontaneity  of  natural  strength. 
The  first  month  of  the  very  next  year  added 
"The  Pilot"  to  the  previous  successes:  a  third 


318  American  Literature. 

book,  unlike  either  of  its  predecessors,  and  with 
out  a  prominent  prototype  in  English  fiction. 
'  The  Pilot,"  in  character  and  event,  perhaps 
seems  just  to  miss  the  possibilities  of 
the  theme  ;  but  the  wonder  lies  in  what 
Cooper  could  give,  not  in  what  he  missed.  The 
breath  of  the  book  is  the  salt  air  of  the  veritable 
Atlantic  ;  its  action  is  that  of  life.  Nowhere  else 
did  Cooper  come  so  near  an  adequate  delineation 
of  women's  character,  or  a  rememberable  por 
trayal  of  the  natural  elements  of  scenes  on  water 
and  on  land.  Its  hero  is  drawn  in  effective  tints, 
and  his  figure  is  both  impressive  in  its 
distinctness  and  ideal  in  its  shadows.  The 
marine  knowledge  is  practically  infallible,  at 
least  for  readers  on  land ;  while  the  Revolutionary 
times  are  originally  treated  by  the  transfer  of  the 
action  to  a  foreign  shore.  Next  came  "  Lionel 
"Lionel  Lincoln ;  or,  The  Leaguers  of  Boston," 
Lincoln."  ^fa  jts  vjvjcj  accounts  of  the  great  battles 

of  '75  on  Massachusetts  soil,  and  with  a  power 
not  usually  shown  by  its  author  in  depicting  his 
minor  characters.  "The  Last  of  the  Mohicans" 
may  not  inaccurately  be  said  to  have  charmed  two 
continents,  in  the  dash  of  its  doings,  the  peculiar 
majesty  of  its  leading  Caucasian  and  Aboriginal 
characters,  and  the  fresh  upland  woodsy  air  that 
exhaled  from  its  vivifying  pages.  In  "  The 
Prairie  "  the  pathos  of  inevitable  death  was  miti 
gated  by  those  visions  and  reflections  which  con 
sole  in  every  race  and  literature;  while  in  "The 


James  Fenimore  Cooper.  319 

Red  Rover "  we  are  once  more  spirited  far  out 
upon  the  scenes  of  that  multiform  unity,  the 
ocean. 

At  the  time  of  the  publication  of  this  vigor 
ously-successful  tale  of  adventure  on  the  «TheRed 
deep,  Cooper  had  reached  a  deserved  and 
really  commanding  popularity.  The  abounding 
personality  of  the  man  seemed  to  have  freer  scope 
on  sea  than  on  land,  and  in  "The  Red  Rover" 
we  surrender  ourselves  to  a  competent  literary 
captain,  whose  eccentricities  and  disputatiousness 
rather  add  to  his  attractiveness.  When,  as  in 
"The  Bravo,"  published  three  years  later,  Cooper 
redoubled  his  attention  to  didactic  and 

..  f       ,  "The  Bravo." 

intense  propagandist!!  ot  democratic 
ideas,  the  power  of  "The  Red  Rover"  or  "The 
Last  of  the  Mohicans,"  or  "The  Spy,"  was  really 
diminished  by  a  non-literary  force,  pulling  partly 
in  a  contrary  direction.  In  this,  and  so  many  of 
the  later  books,  unwisdom  or  extravagance  tended 
to  minimize  the  success  already  won.  But  that 
success  was  won,  and  was  to  endure.  For  conven 
ience'  sake,  the  worse  Cooper  has  here  been 
studied  before  the  better,  that  the  just  impression, 
in  the  logical  order,  might  be  left  upon  the 
reader's  mind.  But  in  the  chronological  order 
we  must  not  forget  that  Cooper  attained,  before 
he  was  forty,  an  established  rank  which  his  follies 
and  irregularities  might  impair  but  could  never 
destroy.  Of  his  eight  first  books  all  but  one 
("Precaution")  was  distinctly  and  lastingly  sue- 


320  American  Literature. 

cessful ;  *    and    several    later  books    were  worthy 
additions  to  this  select  list. 

James  Fenimore  Cooper  created,  developed, 
and  completed,  in  Leather-Stocking,  one  of  the 
most  natural  and  significant  and  attractive  char 
acters  in  the  fiction  of  all  lands. f  He  delineated 
in  Chingachgook  and  Uncas,  with  that  poetic 
justice  which  is  a  proper  union  of  true  poetry  and 
strict  equity,  the  character  of  the  Indian  at  his 
best.  Elsewhere  in  that  remarkable  though 
heterogeneous  list  of  novels  whose  very  titles  are 
like  characteristic  outbursts  of  natural 

Cooper's  .          ..       .  .       .       .. 

special  music,  he  displayed   the  literary  powers 

of  a  leader  on  the  land  and  a  veritable 
master  on  the  sea. 

Considering  in  its  entirety  the  literary  career  of 
Cooper,  and  viewing  it  from  a  point  nearly  forty 
years  after  his  death,  we  can  see  how  it  was 
affected  by  the  conditions  of  the  time  in  which  he 
Conditions  of  ^v^&  and  wrote.  Timid  colonialism 
Cooper's  time.  ha(j  not  yet  emerged  from  its  state  of 
long-continued  deference  toward  England  ;  and 
when  it  occasionally  sought  to  throw  off  the 
trammels,  it  rushed,  for  the  moment,  to  an  oppo 
site  extreme  of  strident  self-assertion.  Hence,  on 
Cooper's  own  part,  the  timidity  of  "  Precaution" 

*  I  by  no  means  agree  with  the  customary  detraction  of  "  Lionel 
Lincoln." 

t  "  The  series  was  a  perfect  one  as  it  was  left.  The  life  of  Leather- 
Stocking  was  now  a  complete  drama  in  five  acts,  beginning  with  the  first 
war-path  in  "  The  Deerslayer,"  followed  by  his  career  of  activity  and  of 
love  in  "  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans  "  and  "  The  Pathfinder,"  and  his  old 
age  and  death  in  "  The  Pioneers  "  and  "  The  Prairie." — Thomas  R.  Louns- 
bury,  "  James  Fenimore  Cooper,"  239. 


James  Fenimore  Cooper.  321 

and  the  contemptuousness  of  "  Home  as  Found  ;" 
or  on  the  other  hand,  "  The  Pathfinder  ; "  the 
novels  attacking  the  aristocratic  feudalism  of 
Europe,  and  the  honest  patriotism  of  the  naval 
history  and  biographies.  Meanwhile,  Cooper's 
public  veered  long  between  a  fear  to  praise  him 
too  quickly,  and  an  overweening  pride  in  his 
world-wide  fame  ;  between  delight  at  his  attacks 
upon  the  effeteness  of  the  old  world,  and  indig 
nation  at  his  outspoken  criticisms  of  the  new. 
Again,  the  waste  of  the  American  intellectual  life 
was  very  apparent  in  Cooper's  work.  The  Puri 
tans  had  devoted  their  mental  strength  to  propa- 
gandism  of  a  peculiar  religious  creed  and  system  ; 
so,  in  his  way,  and  in  considerable  measure,  did 
Cooper.  The  creative  vigor  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  in  the  colonies,  had  principally  been 
applied  to  the  solution  of  problems  of  indepen 
dent  statecraft  ;  and  thus  Cooper,  a  few  decades 
later,  felt  bound  to  enlighten  two  continents 
concerning  his  views  of  the  political  fabric  and 
human  society  in  an  actual  or  ideal  state.  Freed 
from  the  necessities  which  have  obliged  so  many 
American  writers  to  devote  three-fourths  of  their 
time  to  some  wage-earning  drudgery,  Cooper,  in 
the  very  wantonness  of  that  diffuseness  and  haste 
which  marked  the  westward  spread  of  civilization 
after  1800,  took  up  most  energetically  many  an 
unnecessary  task  for  which  he  was  not  fitted  ;  and 
seemed,  as  a  natural  state,  to  be  "  spoiling  for  a 
fight"  of  almost  any  sort.  His  ideas  concerning 
"  sweetness  and  light "  in  human  life  were  about 


21 


322  American  Literature. 

as  delicately  attractive  as  his  presentation  of  the 
"  sweet  reasonableness  "  of  religion  itself.  Fore 
most,  in  his  day,  in  denouncing  American  Philis 
tinism,  he  was  himself  a  Philistine  of  abounding 
vitality,  to  whom  rest  eternal  would  have  been 
synonymous  with  everlasting  woe.  Claiming  to 
be  a  proper  American  aristocrat,  in  him  the  ducal 
qualities  of  serene  self-respect,  and  a  gracious 
attitude  toward  less  fortunate  beings,  never 
appeared  in  any  conspicuous  light.  Only  when 
he  unconsciously  lost  himself  in  his  work,  and 
heartily  threw  his  great  body,  his  warm  heart,  and 
his  honest  Saxon  soul  into  the  written  page,  did 
he  display  the  powers  of  his  individuality  in  their 
noblest  estate.  The  time  in  which  he  lived  was 
not  responsible  for  all  his  qualities,  and  certainly 
it  disliked  some  of  them  with  a  cordiality  which 
Cooper,  on  his  part,  reciprocated  by  bewailing  or 
hating  his  time.  But  his  character  was  unfavor 
ably  affected  by  the  environment,  which  exagger 
ated  his  worse  qualities  at  the  very  period,  and 
for  the  very  reason,  that  it  gave  full  scope  to  his 
better. 

Cooper  died  September  14,  1851,  the  day 
before  his  sixty-second  birthday.  A  little  more 
than  five  months  later  a  commemorative  meeting 
was  held  in  New  York,  the  city  around  which 
Cooper's  literary  life  had  chiefly  moved,  and 

cooper,  Irving,  which  ProPerIY  deemed  itself  most 
Bryant,  and  honored  by  those  services  which  be- 

Webster.  J 

longed  to  the  country  at  large.     Death 
had  silenced  those  bitter  and  ephemeral  outcries 


James  Fenimore  Cooper.  323 

which,  chiefly  through  his  own  fault,  had  attended 
the  novelist's  career, — but  which,  indeed,  were 
already  forgotten  by  most  of  those  not  immedi 
ately  friendly  or  personally  hostile  to  Cooper. 
Daniel  Webster,  the  representative  statesman  and 
orator  of  the  time,  was  the  presiding  officer. 
Eight  months  later  he,  too,  was  to  pass  away,  dis 
appointed  in  his  presidential  aspirations,  fore 
seeing  the  ruin  of  the  Whig  party,  and  shunned 
by  the  more  excitable  and  mischievous  extremists 
of  both  "  sections  "  of  the  country.  To  Webster, 
however,  more  than  to  any  other  individual,  or 
any  group  of  individuals,  was  due  the  develop 
ment  and  consolidation  of  that  discreet  and  toler 
ant,  but  intense,  Union  sentiment  which  made  the 
disruption  of  the  republic  impossible  in  the  fol 
lowing  decade.  That  masterly  man  had  devoted 
his  whole  life — consistent  even  in  its  inconsisten 
cies — to  the  idea  of  country,  one  and  indivisible. 
Naturally,  therefore,  the  essentially  native  and 
national  quality  of  Cooper's  novels  was  that  most 
prominent  in  Webster's  mind.  "  While  the  love 
of  country  continues  to  prevail,"  said  he,  "  his 
memory  will  exist  in  the  hearts  of  the  people.  So 
truly  patriotic  and  American  throughout,  they 
should  find  a  place  in  every  American's  library." 
The  oration  of  the  day,  with  equal  propriety,  fell 
from  the  lips  of  William  Cullen  Bryant.  After 
the  death  of  Irving  (who  had  presided  at  the 
meeting  preliminary  to  this  commemoration)  Bry 
ant  remained  for  twenty  years  the  most  distin 
guished  citizen  of  New  York.  Irving  had  first 


324  American  Literature. 

showed  to  America  and  Europe  an  indigenous 
literature,  valuable  in  itself  and  not  merely  a  curi 
osity.  Cooper  had  first  produced  an  American 
series  of  novels,  and  had  carried  the  fame  of  his 
country's  books  to  the  Continent  itself.  Bryant 
had  turned  to  solid  poetic  achievement  the  prom 
ise  of  those  who  had  begun  to  sing  at  the  period 
of  the  dawn  of  imagination  in  the  United  States. 
Of  the  four  men,  each  in  "his  way,  had  done  a 
great  and  significant  service,  and  the  survivors 
gladly  honored  him  who  was  the  first  to  depart. 

"  It  is  worthy  of  note,"  said  Mr.  Bryant,  "that 
just  about  the  time  that  '  The  Spy '  made  its 
appearance,  the  dawn  of  what  we  now  call  our 
literature  was  just  breaking.  The  concluding 
number  of  Dana's  'Idle  Man/  a  work  neglected 
Cooper  in  the  at  first,  but  now  numbered  among  the 
American  °f  ^est  tnmgs  of  the  kind  in  our  language, 
literature.  was  issued  jn  the  same  month.  The 
'Sketch  Book'  was  just  then  completed;  the 
world  was  admiring  it,  and  its  author  was  medi 
tating  '  Bracebridge  Hall.'  Miss  Sedgwick,  about 
the  same  time,  made  her  first  essay  in  that  charm 
ing  series  of  novels  of  domestic  life  in  New  Eng 
land,  which  have  gained  her  so  high  a  reputation. 
Percival,  now  unhappily  silent,  had  just  put  to 
press  a  volume  of  poems.  I  have  a  copy  of  an 
edition  of  Halleck's  '  Fanny,'  published  in  the 
same  year ;  the  poem  of  '  Yamoyden/  by  East- 
burn  and  Sands,  appeared  almost  simultaneously 
with  it.  Livingston  was  putting  the  finishing 
hand  to  his  '  Report  on  the  Penal  Code  of  Louis- 


fames  Fenimore  Cooper.  325 

iana,'  a  work  written  with  such  grave,  persuasive 
eloquence,  that  it  belongs  as  much  to  our  litera 
ture  as  to  our  jurisprudence.  Other  contempora 
neous  American  works  there  were,  now  less  read. 
Paul  Allen's  poem  of  '  Noah '  was  just  laid  on  the 
counters  of  the  booksellers.  Arden  published  at 
the  same  time,  in  this  city,  a  translation  of  Ovid's 
'  Tristia/  in  heroic  verse,  in  which  the  complaints 
of  the  effeminate  Roman  poet  were  rendered  with 
great  fidelity  to  the  original,  and  sometimes  not 
without  beauty.  If  I  may  speak  of  myself,  it  was 
in  that  year  that  I  timidly  entrusted  to  the  winds 
and  waves  of  public  opinion  a  small  cargo  of  my 
own — a  poem  entitled  '  The  Ages/  and  half  a 
dozen  shorter  ones,  in  a  thin  duodecimo  volume." 
In  the  course  of  this  address,  one  of  the  earlier 
in  the  irregular  series  which  the  veteran  Bryant 
delivered  from  time  to  time  at  the  request  of  fel 
low-authors  and  fellow-citizens,  he  touched  very 
kindly  but  perhaps  sufficiently  plainly  upon  most 
of  the  demerits,  as  well  as  the  merits  of  the  novels 
of  land  and  sea  considered  in  this  chapter.  His 
estimate  of  the  character  of  Leather-Stocking,  and 
of  the  five  books  in  which  his  life  is  painted,  is  of 
historic  value,  as  representing  the  more  intelligent 
contemporary  opinion  at  the  time  of  their  appear 
ance.  "The  Prairie,"  on  its  publication  in  1827, 
Bryant  read  "  with  a  certain  awe,  an  undefined 
sense  of  sublimity,  such  as  one  experiences  on 
entering  for  the  first  time  upon  these  immense 
grassy  deserts  from  which  the  work  takes  its 
name."  Its  Indians  were  "  copies  of  the  Amer- 


326  American  Literature. 

ican  savage  somewhat  idealized,  but  not  the  less  a 
part  of  the  wild  nature  in  which  they  have  their 
haunts."  Its  pioneers  lived  "  in  a  sort  of  primi 
tive  and  patriarchal  barbarism,  sluggish  on  ordi 
nary  occasions  but  terrible  when  roused,  like  the 
hurricane  that  sweeps  the  grand  but  monotonous 
wilderness "  in  which  they  dwelt — a  "  natural 
growth  of  those  ancient  fields  of  the  west." 
Leather-Stocking  was  "  no  less  in  harmony  with 
the  silent  desert  "  in  which  he  wandered.  He  was 
and  is  "  a  philosopher  of  the  woods,  ignorant  of 
books,  but  instructed  in  all  that  nature,  without 
the  aid  of  science,  could  reveal  to  the  man  of 
quick  senses  and  inquiring  intellect,  whose  life  has 
been  passed  under  the  open  sky,  and  in  compan 
ionship  with  a  race  whose  animal  perceptions  are 
the  acutest  and  most  cultivated  of  which  there  is 
any  example.  But  Leather-Stocking  has  higher 
qualities  ;  in  him  there  is  a  genial  blending  of  the 
gentlest  virtues  of  the  civilized  man  with  the 
better  nature  of  the  aboriginal  tribes  ;  all  that  in 
them  is  noble,  generous,  and  ideal,  is  adopted  into 
his  own  kindly  character,  and  all  that  is  evil  is 
rejected.  But  why  should  I  attempt  to  analyze 
a  character  so  familiar?  Leather-Stocking  is 
acknowledged,  on  all  hands,  to  be  one  of  the 
noblest,  as  well  as  most  striking  and  original  cre 
ations  of  fiction.  In  some  of  his  subsequent 
novels,  Cooper — for  he  had  not  yet  attained  to 
the  full  maturity  of  his  powers — heightened  and 
ennobled  his  first  conception  of  the  character,  but 


James  Fenimore  Cooper.  327 

in  '  The  Pioneers '  it  dazzled  the  world  with  the 
splendor  of  novelty." 

In  his  peroration,  which,  as  usual  in  eulogistic 
oratory,  was  too  glowingly  enthusiastic  in  its  trib 
utes  and  prophecies,  Bryant  found  in  the  many 
translations  of  Cooper  some  portent 

A  national  nov- 

that  his  works  might  thereby  survive       eiist  of  inter- 

national  fame. 

the  language  in  which  they  were 
written.  This  speculative  compliment  need  not 
detain  our  attention,  for  the  succeeding  quarter  of 
a  century  has  shown  that  English  is  to  be — nay,  is 
— the  dominant  language  of  the  world,  and  that 
its  distributing  centre,  at  least  as  regards  numbers 
of  speakers  and  readers,  is  to  pass  to  the  nation 
of  which  Cooper  chiefly  wrote.  Said  Bryant : 
"  In  that  way  of  writing  in  which  he  excelled,  it 
seems  to  me  that  he  united,  in  a  pre-eminent 
degree,  those  qualities  which  enabled  him  to 
interest  the  largest  number  of  readers.  He  wrote 
not  for  the  fastidious,  the  over-refined,  the  mor 
bidly  delicate  ;  for  these  find  in  his  genius  some 
thing  too  robust  for  their  liking — something  by 
which  their  sensibilities  are  too  rudely  shaken  ; 
but  he  wrote  for  mankind  at  large — for  men  and 
women  in  the  ordinary  healthful  state  of  feeling— 
and  in  their  admiration  he  found  his  reward.  .  *  . 
Hence  it  is  that  he  has  earned  a  fame  wider,  I 
think,  than  any  author  of  modern  times — wider, 
certainly,  than  any  author  of  any  age  ever  en 
joyed  in  his  lifetime.  All  his  excellencies  are 
translatable — they  pass  readily  into  languages  the 
least  allied  in  their  genius  to  that  in  which  he 


328  American  Literature. 

wrote,  and    in    them    he   touches   the   heart   and 
kindles  the  imagination  with  the  same  power  as  in 

the  original  English Such  are  the  works 

so  widely  read,  and  so  universally  admired  in  all 
the  zones  of  the  globe,  and  by  men  of  every  kin 
dred  and  every  tongue  ;  works  which  have  made 
of  those  who  dwell  in  remote  latitudes,  wanderers 
•in  our  forests  and  observers  of  our  manners,  and 
have  inspired  them  with  an  interest  in  our  history. 
....  Over  all  the  countries  into  whose  speech 
this  great  man's  works  have  been  rendered  by  the 
labors  of  their  scholars,  the  sorrow  of  that  loss 
which  we  deplore  is  now  diffusing  itself.  Here 
we  lament  the  ornament  of  our  country,  there 
they  mourn  the  death  of  him  who  delighted  the 

human    race The  creations  of   his   genius, 

fixed  in  living  words,  survive  the  frail  material 
organs  by  which  the  words  were  first  traced. 
They  partake  of  a  middle  nature,  between  the 
deathless  mind  and  the  decaying  body  of  which 
they  are  the  common  offspring,  and  are  therefore 
destined  to  a  duration,  if  not  eternal,  yet  indefi 
nite.  The  examples  he  has  given  in  his  glorious 
fictions,  of  heroism,  honor,  and  truth ;  of  large 
sympathies  between  man  and  man,  of  all  that  is 
good,  great,  and  excellent,  embodied  in  person 
ages  marked  with  so  strong  an  individuality  that 
we  place  them  among  our  friends  and  favorites ; 
his  frank  and  generous  men,  his  gentle  and  noble 
women,  shall  live  through  centuries  to  come,  and 
only  perish  with  our  language." 


James  Fenimore  Cooper. 


329 


The  cool-blooded  Bryant  was  here  too  impet 
uous  ;  but  this,  at  least,  we  can  say  in  agreement : 
Cooper,  with  a  hundred  faults,  possessed  the  sur 
passing  merit  due  to  a  large  literary  creator  in 
a  field  which  he  found  and  made  his  own. 


CHAPTER  X. 

NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE. 

THERE  are  some  writers — not  many,  in  the 
literature  of  any  land — whom  it  is  a  sponta- 
Literary  neous  pleasure  to  read.  In  their  pages 
ofthe  one  'ls  not  troubled  by  notable  unworthi- 
beautifui.  ness  of  theme,  crudeness  of  plan,  imper 
fection  of  development,  irregularity  of  thought, 
infelicity  of  expression.  All  parts  combine  to 
give  a  high  and  true  literary  pleasure.  The  critic 
does  not,  to  be  sure,  abdicate  his.  function,  or 
declare  that  the  books  of  such  writers  are  above 
praise.  He  prefers  this  to  that,  notes  and  dis 
cusses  various  characteristics  of  genius  and 
product,  and  may  even  declare  poem,  tale,  or  large 
book  a  mistake  or  a  failure.  But  the  failure,  in 
such  a  case,  has  to  do  with  the  grand  design,  not 
with  its  details ;  or  perhaps  the  declaration  of 
failure,  means  only  that  creator  and  critic  hold 
radically  different  opinions  on  the  subject  in 
question.  Of  the  substantial  unity,  completeness, 
natural  beauty,  and  adequacy  of  the  product,  or 
perhaps  of  the  author's  whole  genius,  in  its  parts 
and  in  its  entirety,  there  need  arise  no  trouble 
some  question.  Thus,  in  considering  the  writings 
of  Dante,  one  may  prefer  the  "  Divine  Comedy," 
another  the  "  New  Life ; "  or,  in  reading  the 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  331 

longer  work  alone,  one  may  best  like  the  "  In 
ferno,"  another  the  "  Purgatorio,"  and  still  a  third 
the  "  Paradiso."  To  the  stern  Protestant  lover 
of  Bunyan's  "  Pilgrim's  Progress,"  Dante's  med 
iaeval  Romanism  may  appear  an  ineradicable 
blemish  ;  while  to  the  ultramontane  Romanist,  on 
the  other  .  hand,  his  frank  treatment  of  certain 
popes  and  saints  may  seem  sad  liberalism.  The 
canto  or  the  line  may  be  declared  indefensibly 
poor  or  unspeakably  glorious ;  in  a  word,  the 
Dante  critic  may  ply  his  trade  with  the  affection 
ate  zeal  of  a  Longfellow,  or  with  the  mathemat 
ical  letter-counting  minuteness  of  a  Dryasdust. 
But  whatever  be  the  standpoint  or  method,  there 
is  still  in  Dante  something  that,  makes  him  a  poet 
of  joy  and  delight,  or  of  sadness  and  sorrow  that 
in  themselves  have  an  element  of  poetic  pleasure. 
His  work,  when  we  study  it,  takes  us  out  of  the 
humdrum  world,  or  bathes  that  world  in  the  new 
light  and  fragrance  of  genius,  so  that  its  earth- 
liness,  its  men  and  women,  its  thought  and  life, 
its  very  atmosphere,  seem  real  and  yet  ideal,  fa 
miliar  but  all  above  the  commonplace.  In  very 
truth  there  is  in  the  literature  of  genius  a  breath 
of  the  New  Life  which  Dante  entered  under  the 
guidance  of  love. 

Between  Dante  and  Hawthorne  there  is  no 
need  to  draw  a  long  comparison.  The  sad-faced 
dweller  in  the  land  of  shades  forth-fared  Dante  and 
six  centuries  ago,  while  our  Yankee  Hawthorne- 
romancer  is  remembered  by  many  not  yet  past 
middle  life.  One  wrote  verse,  the  other  prose  ; 


33 2  American  Literature. 

one  peered  into  the  unseen  for  his  august  theme  ; 
the  other  found  his  subjects  in  the  Massachusetts 
soil  at  his  feet.  The  sadness  of  Dante  was  not 
so  often  irradiated  with  cheer  as  was  the  serious 
purpose  of  Hawthorne — a  purpose  sometimes 
mistaken  for  morbidness  or  gloom  of  personal 
character.  Nor,  finally,  would  any  wise  critic 
aver  that  Hawthorne,  though  clearly  enough  the  / 
greatest  author  yet  produced  in  America,  is  to  go 
down  the  centuries  secure  of  any  fame  akin  to 
Dante's.  And  yet  there  are  some  characteristics, 
absolute  and  relative,  which  both  men  had  ;  and  it 
will  be  enough  for  my  present  purpose  it  it  be 
admitted  that  Hawthorne's  literary  creations  are 
things  of  genius,  and  that  in  reading  them  we 
turn  to  a  region  in  which  study  becomes  a  pleas 
ure  rather  than  a  duty.  It  would  be  a  sorry  day 
for  criticism  if  it  never  found  a  book  or  poem— 
or  in  a  broad  sense  a  whole  body  of  writings — 
to  which  it  could  say,  as  to  a  flower  or  a 
shell : 

"  Being  everything  which  now  thou  art 
Be  nothing  which  thou  art  not." 

Thus  gladly  we  turn  toward  the  singularly 
beautiful  and  characteristic  list  of  writings  which 
began  with  "Fanshawe"  in  1828  and  closed  with 
the  unfinished  "  Dolliver  Romance"  in  1864. 
Throughout  nearly  all  of  them  we  shall  find  that 
artlessness  which  characterizes  the  true  genius, 
and  that  art  which  shows  genius  to  be  accom 
panied  by  high  powers  of  construction  and  elab- 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  333 

oration.  An  English  painter  and  poet  of  Haw 
thorne's  own  time  wrote,  in  youth,  a  story  which 
has  for  its  central  thought  the  idea  that  « Hand  and 
"an  artist  need  not  seek  for  intellectual-  Sou1-" 
ized  moral  intentions  in  his  work,  but  will  fulfil 
God's  highest  purpose  by  simple  truth  in  mani 
festing,  in  a  spirit  of  devout  faith,  the  gift  that 
God  has  given  him."*  This  idea  is  one  which,  in 
some  shape,  often  occurs  to  Hawthorne's  readers, 
and  must  more  often  have  been  in  the  romancer's 
own  mind,  though  he  seldom  formulated  it. 

The  delight  which  we  take  in  Hawthorne  is, 
then,  the  joy  of  perception  of  the  work  of  an 
artist.  The  several  methods  of  intellectual  com 
munication  between  mind  and  mind  are  widely 
variant  in  method  and  result.  We  derive  one 
impression  or  pleasure  from  painting,  Literature 
and  another — now  stronger,  now  weaker,  as  art- 
from  sculpture,  architecture,  action,  music ;  or 
from  the  apprehension  of  inanimate  nature  by  the 
sense.  It  is  the  privilege  and  power  of  literature, 
in  the  hands  of  its  masters  to  convey  to  readers 
a  sort  of  combination  or  intense  suggestion  of 
almost  all  other  methods  of  thought-transfer  or 
soul-expression.  If  printing  is  the  "art  preserva 
tive  of  all  arts,"  literature  is  the  art  suggestive 
or  inclusive  of  all  arts.  The  author  is  an  artist, 
and  in  direct  proportion  as  he  fulfils  the  highest 
artistic  function  in  choice  and  elaboration  of  his 
creations,  does  he  deserve  his  craft-name  in  its 
highest  sense.  The  authors  who  are,  by  right, 

*  Edward  Dowden,  in  The  Academy,  Feb.  5,  1887. 


334  American  Literature. 

nearest  of  kin  to  Michael  Angelo,  Raphael, 
Beethoven,  are  those  that  select  some  theme  from 
the  manifold  life  of  the  universe  in  which  we  exist, 
and  develop  it  into  a  literary  form  best  worthy  of 
comparison,  for  ideal  merit  and  poetic  impression, 
with  the  statue  of  Moses,  the  Sistine  Madonna, 
or  the  Eighth  Symphony.  Usually,  the  poet  and 
prose  romancer  most  attain  success  in  the  devel 
opment  of  such  literary  form;  and  hence  the 
highest  literature  of  a  world  or  a  land,  of  all 
times  or  of  any  one  time,  is  that  of  poetry  and 
fiction.  The  spiritual  and  physical  worlds,  the 
ego  and  the  non-ego,  lie  peculiarly  open  to  the 
singer  and  the  story-teller.  Our  libraries  are 
crammed  with  the  trash  of  verse  and  the  rubbish 
of  invented  story ;  but  now  and  then  their  shelves 
are  brightened  with  a  book,  in  either  division, 
that  gives  the  joy  we  get  from  a  noble  strain  or  a 
radiant  picture. 

The  precise  success  which  Hawthorne  has 
attained,  in  his  artist-work,  is  a  matter  of  debate, 
which  it  is  hopeless  to  try  to  settle  definitely  as 
yet.  The  neglect  which  once  surrounded  his 
Hawthorne  name  has  changed  to  a  too  silly  and 
as  artist.  reverential  laudation.  Already  this 
modest  writer  has  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the 
zealots  who  study  plays  or  poems  of  Shakes 
peare  or  Shelley  or  Browning  for  "  inner  mean 
ings  "  or  esoteric  doctrine.  There  can  no  longer 
be  question,  however,  that  Hawthorne  is  an  artist, 
to  be  measured  by  the  canons  applicable  to  the 
broader  and  more  ambitious  creations,  and  to 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  335 

stand  or  fall  in  letters  according  as  his  writings 
endure  the  large  tests  which  they  are  brought  to 
face. 

Often  enough  did  Hawthorne  express  his 
knowledge  of  the  tremendous  lesson  which  life 
teaches  to  a  great  artist  like  a  Dante  or  a  Milton, 
but  cannot  teach  to  a  Schopenhauer  or  an  Omar 
Khayyam.  Bunyan  never  insisted  more 

.  .  .  r    ^      .      .  The  romancer 

strongly  upon  the  notion  of  God,  duty,  of  the  human 
and  immortality;  upon  the  "  sinfulness 
of  sin,"  as  the  old  preachers  used  to  phrase  it,  and 
as  the  liberal  romancer  in  reality  accepted  it. 
The  human  heart  was  Hawthorne's  highest  and 
most  constant  theme,  and  though  he  never  wasted 
time  in  orotund  sermonizing,  and  threw  away  as 
chaff  fit  for  "  Earth's  Holocaust "  much  that  creed- 
makers,  from  Nice  to  Plymouth,  deem  sacred,  he 
was  ever,  without  being  less  an  artist,  a  force  in 
the  world  of  life  and  letters.  He  watched  with 
keen,  deep  eyes,  but  sometimes  he  wrote  with  a 
pen  of  flame.  "  The  heart,  the  heart, — there  was 
the  little  yet  boundless  sphere  wherein  existed  the 
original  wrong  of  which  the  crime  and  misery  of 
this  outward  world  were  merely  types.  Purify 
that  inward  sphere,  and  the  many  shapes  of  evil 
that  haunt  the  outward,  and  which  now  seem 
almost  our  only  realities,  will  turn  to  shadowy 
phantoms  and  vanish  of  their  own  accord ;  but  if 
we  go  no  deeper  than  the  intellect,  and  strive, 
with  merely  that  feeble  instrument,  to  discern 
and  rectify  what  is  wrong,  our  whole  accomplish 
ment  will  be  a  dream."  * 

*  "  Earth's  Holocaust,"  in  "  Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse." 


336  American  Literature, 


This  "  inward  sphere,"  the  human  heart,  was 
Hawthorne's  field  of  study  and  portrayal.  He 
saw  and  described  its  innocence,  its  purity,  its 
loveliness,  its  noble  hopes,  its  truest  triumphs,  its 
temptations,  its  sinful  tendency,  its  desperate 
struggles,  its  downward  motions,  its  malignity, 
its  "  total  depravity,"  at  least  in  appearance,  its 
final  petrifaction  and  self-destruction — the  only 
destruction  of  which,  in  the  divine  plan,  it  is 
capable.  Life,  in  Hawthorne's  view,  was  no 
Human  Comedy,  as  to  Balzac,  or  tragedy  of  lost 
souls,  as  to  the  early  New  England  theologians, 
but  the  struggle  of  individual  men,  women,  and 
children  with  the  powers  within  and  without  them, 
and  chiefly  the  powers  within.  Surely  a  romancer 
could  have  no  higher  theme,  and  highly  did  Haw 
thorne  treat  it. 

But  did  he  thereby  become  the  less  an  artist  or 
the  more  ? 

The  literature  of  the  two  great  Anglo-Saxon 
peoples  has  always  had  a  tolerably  clear  idea  that 
there  is  a  necessary  connection  between  art  and 
ethics.  It  has  contained  many  mischievous  or 
frivolous  books  ;  it  has  wavered  between  the 
Art  and  austerity  of  Bunyan  and  the  license  of  the 
ethics,  dramatists  of  the  Restoration  ;  it  has  been 
successively  influenced  by  Norman-French,  Italian, 
Latin,  and  Greek  culture ;  but  it  has  never  lost 
sight  of  certain  principles  peculiarily  its  own. 
One  of  these  principles  is  that  a  book  should  have 
a  definite  purpose,  a  real  reason  for  being,  if  it 
expects  a  long  life.  This  principle  has  not  been 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne. 


337 


lost  even  in  the  imaginative  literature  of  England 
and  America. 

Before  the  novel,  the  poem  afforded  our  intel 
lectual  ancestors  their  means  of  amusement ;  and 
in  early  English  poetry  the  moral  element  was 
seldom  lacking.  The  Anglo-Saxons  found  in  the 
verse  ascribed  to  Caedmon,  in  the  paraphrase  of 
Judith,  and  even  in  the  non-Christian  story  of 
"  Beowulf,"  stern  expressions  of  the  inevitableness 
of  retribution  and  penalty.  Like  Miles  Standish, 
they  liked  Old  Testament  wars  better  than  New 
Testament  peace,  but  their  scanty  literature  was 
prized  largely  for  its  moral  lessons.  Later,  in 
Robert  of  Gloucester's  "  Chronicle,"  in  the  grim 
and  telling  force  of  the  satire  in  "  Piers  Plowman," 
and  in  the  "  Canterbury  Tales,"  English  readers 
amused  themselves  while  they  were  getting  advice, 
warning,  and  entreaty.  "  Piers  Plowman,"  with 
its  sharp  distinctions  between  righteousness  and 
hypocrisy,  and  the  "  Canterbury  Tales,"  with  their 
lifelike  pictures  of  all  classes  of  Englishmen,  were 
in  a  true  sense  precursors  of  the  English  Reforma 
tion.  They  were  novels  in  verse,  but  they  were 
something  more.  Even  the  "  Faerie  Queene," 
with  its  cumbrous  supernatural  machinery,  never 
let  imagination  hide  the  "XII.  Morall  Vertues." 
It  was  an  Italian  graft  on  the  tough  old  English 
tree. 

When  fiction  took  the  place  of  poetry,  as  an 
intellectual  amusement,  the  same  principle  held 
good.  To  this  day,  the  best-known  work  of 
imagination  in  English  prose  is  a  terribly  earnest 


33&  American  Literature. 

sermon.  It  so  happened  that  the  growth  of  the 
English  novel  began  when  English  society  and 
religion  were  once  more  in  a  degraded  state,  but 
in  the  indecency  and  coarseness  of  the  novel  of  the 
eighteenth  century  there  still  appears  something 
that  is  not  French,  not  Italian,  not  Spanish.  Rob- 
Moraiiawin  mson  Crusoe  is  a  moral  Englishman 
English  fiction.  abroad,  who  has  changed  his  sky,  not 
his  disposition.  Moralizing,  if  not  morality,  is  not 
absent  from  the  loose  sayings  of  Sterne.  Swift, 
in  his  malignant,  half-insane  way,  at  least  had 
reforms  in  view.  Fielding,  like  Chaucer  and  the 
author  of  "  Piers  Plowman/'  felt  that  accurate 
delineation  was  the  precursor  of  a  change  for  the 
better.  Goldsmith's  pictures  of  virtuous  rural  life 
are  still  beloved  because,  in  Taine's  phrase,  the 
chief  of  them  "  unites  and  harmonizes  in  one  char 
acter  the  best  features  of  the  manners  and  morals 
of  the  time  and  country,  and  creates  an  admira 
tion  and  love  for  pious  and  orderly,  domestic  and 
disciplined,  laborious  and  rural  life  ;  Protestant 
and  English  virtue  has  not  a  more  approved  and 
amiable  exemplar."  Samuel  Richardson,  the  pre 
cursor  of  the  long-regnant  school  of  sentimental 
novelists,  spent  his  literary  lifetime  in  trying  to 
show  that  integrity  and  uprightness,  even  of  the 
Grandisonian  order,  are  more  attractive  than  the 
vice  of  the  "  town  "  in  the  era  of  the  Georges. 

Something  more  than  mere  amusement,  some 
thing  behind  the  story,  is  still  more  evident  in 
Scott,  the  Scheherezade  of  modern  literature  ;  in 
Dickens,  promoting  humanity  and  good  fellow- 


Nathaniel  Haivthorne. 


339 


ship,  and  attacking  abuses  in  prisons,  schools,  law 
courts,  and  home-life  ;  in  Thackeray,  tilting  loyally 
against  social  shams ;  in  saddened  but  brave 
Charlotte  and  Emily  Bronte,  amid  the  Yorkshire 
moors  ;  in  George  Eliot,  describing  the  Jew  as  she 
believed  him  to  be  in  reality,  doing  justice  to  the 
stern  righteousness  of  a  Dinah  Morris,  or  telling 
how  Savonarola  was  a  Protestant  in  spite  of  him 
self.  Turning  to  America,  we  note,  as  in  Eng 
land,  the  almost  total  disappearance  of  the  out 
ward  immorality  which  defiled  British  fiction  a 
hundred  years  ago,  and  which  still  disgraces  a 
part  of  French  fiction  :  and  more  than  this,  we  find 
positive  qualities,  and  a  belief  that  story-telling  is 
something  more  than  story-telling.  Irving  feels  - 
with  the  heart  of  humanity ;  Cooper,  like  Scott, 
magnifies  the  chivalric  virtues,  under  new  skies  ;  ^ 
and  Hawthorne  goes  to  the  depth  of  the* soul  in  - 
his  search  for  the  basal  principles  of  human 
action. 

What  does  all  this  mean  ?  Is  a  book  great 
because  its  moral  purpose  is  sound,  or  is  all  litera 
ture  bad  as  art  and  literature  if  it  lacks  the  right 
eous  purpose  ?  Not  at  all ;  neither  has  Anglo- 
Saxon  literature  monopoly  of  righteousness  and 
purpose.  It  means  that  this  literature  has  insisted 
more  strongly  than  others  upon  the  necessary 
connection  between  art  and  ethics  ;  that  it  has 
never  prized  a  profitless,  soulless  An  inevitable 
beauty ;  and  that,  so  long  as  the  world  race-principle. 
can  be  made  better  by  literature,  book-makers  can 
and  ought  to  help.  Between  two  books  of  equal 


340  American  Literature. 

literary  merit,  but  of  unequal  purpose,  it  gives 
greater  and  more  lasting  favor  to  the  more  useful 
book.  It  believes,  with  the  American  poet  who 
is  usually  considered  our  chief  apostle  of  the 
merely  beautiful,  that  "  taste  holds  intimate  rela 
tions  with  the  intellect  and  the  moral  sense." 
Whether  it  is  right  or  wrong  in  this  general  idea, 
it  is  certain  that  any  change  in  it,  whether 
wrought  by  believers  in  "  art  for  art's  sake,"  by 
pseudo  Greek  poets,  by  "  cosmic "  bards  who 
sometimes  confuse  right  and  wrong,  or  by  strictly 
"  realistic "  novelists,  will  change  a  principle  in 
accord  with  which  the  race  has  acted  for  ten  cen 
turies. 

In  accord  with  that  principle  Nathaniel  Haw 
thorne  worked  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of 
Hawthorne's  his  literary  life ;  but  he  was  too  great 
foundation.  an  art;st  to  confuse  for  a  moment  the 

demands  of  ethics  with  those  of  pure  art.  With 
this  explicit  statement  at  the  outset  I  shall  not 
need  to  recur  again,  by  the  use  of  the  word 
ethical,  to  this  fundamental  element  in  the  great 
ness  of  Hawthorne's  work,  save  as  it  may  incident 
ally  appear. 

Because    of   his    general    theme — the   heart   of 

man — and  the   necessary  and  artistic  elaboration 

of    a    theme    stained    with    evil,    many   careless 

readers   and    a   few    superficial    critics  have  been 

wont    to    declare      Hawthorne    morbid, 

Was 

Hawthorne   gloomy,     fond     of     repulsive     spiritual 

"morbid"?     S1.f,  ,  j    v          jU 

analysis   of    depraved    or   debased   char 
acters,  or  at  best  a  dweller  on  the  "  night-side  of 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  341 

nature."  Even  Emerson  made  a  misleading  half- 
statement  when  he  said  that  Hawthorne  "rode 
well  his  steed  of  the  night," — as  though  he  had 
been  a  Poe  or  a  Hoffman.  Hawthorne  was  not  a 
graveyard  ghoul,  a  specialist  in  morbid  psychol 
ogy,  a  black-sheeted  monk  of  the  order  that 
officiates  only  at  funerals.  A  careful  reading  of 
one  of  his  books — or  of  the  biography  of 
"  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  and  his  Wife,"  by  their 
son  Julian — is  enough  to  dispel  the  error,  which 
strangely  lingers  here  and  there.  Hawthorne 
dealt  with  the  profoundest  themes  of  human  life 
and  thought ;  he  saw  the  mind  within  the  body, 
and  the  soul  within  the  mind.  The  deep  and 
lasting  consequences  of  sin,  and  that  most  awfuL 
of  punishments,  the  self-slaughter  of  a  soul,  he. 
studied  and  portrayed  in  more  than  one  of  his 
stories.  If  "morbid  psychology"  mean  the  exam 
ination  and  description  of  temptation,  evil,  and 
the  result,  then  morbid  psychology  is  an  element 
in  Hawthorne's  books.  But  he  never  describes  • 
evil  for  the  mere  pleasure  of  description  ;  still  less 
with  any  pessimistic  motive.  He  delves 

"Down,  mid  the  tangled  roots  of  things, 
That  coil  about  the  central  fire," 

in  order  to  see  how  they 

"  Climb  to  a  soul  in  grass  and  flowers." 

Sin  is  never  disconnected  from  penalty,  and 
penalty  is  applied  for  the  purification  of  some 
imaginary  character,  or  virtually  of  that  very  real 


,.|.'  American  Literature. 

(  h.n  .K  lei ,  the  in<  li\  idn.d  leader  of  thr  story. 
Hawthorne  is  never  nun  hid  in  I  IK-  sense  in  wln<  h 
ihr  him  is  sometimes  applu  able  lo  I  <>MI  -nem  II 
or  certain  I'Kihli  novelist:,  of  j;eneial  lenown,  or 
to  lc.d".ir  l'o<  .  lie  does  not  approach  a  Bloomy 
theme  lor  I  he  pmpo'.e  o|  in.  il.  ni"  .1  '.en-. at  i<  >n,  or 
pi  01  hit  in-;  .1  "i  in-  .«  HI  ic  el  I  eel,  or  evoking  .1  In  il 
1 1.1  n!  .11  I  r, I  H  i  < Mill.  I  ale,  in  In:;  view,  vv.i1,  I  he 
mosl  an«Mist  ol  themes;  and  he  saw  il  in  it-, 
riitiiety,  in  its  gradations  hom  l\o-;er(  hilling- 

\voilh  lo  lillle  IV. ill.  \\'hell  he  (hose  he  could 
<  i  (.iic  I  hill-',  .r,  evanescent  and  merely  beautiful 
as  .1  Imtlerlly  or  a  sunlit  l)iil>l>le  ;  hul  when  lie 
pav.ed  inio  the  shadow  it  was  for  serious  por- 
Lrayals.  So  far  was  I  lau  I  hoi  nc  hom  linn-;  .in 
iinu  h<  »1«  '.oiuc  soul  that  not  even  hi-.  <  I. r,  .mate  and 
1 1  n  nd  1  ,on^l  el  low  was  more  I  nil  y  a  ;;ent  le  opt  hm*.  I 
.uid  lover  ol  existence.  Mr.  h<  »i  m  1 1 1  <  •  a  m  1  per 
sonal  «haia(tei  liave  heeu  made  known  to  all  the 
\\('ild,  and  rarely  h.r.  l»e<-n  displayed  -.in  h  a 
pKlnre  ol  Iresh  heauty,  and  serene  sunlight,  and 
sell  respecting  "acceptance  <»l  the  universe," 
spiritual  and  natural,  Indeed,  hi.  <>\\n  \\oid-.  lo 
In.  sistel  in  law  I'.li/abeth  Teahody  are  enon;;h 
"When  I  write  anything  thai  I  know  or  suspect 
is  moi  hid,  1  leel  as  I  hoii-;h  I  had  told  a  lie." 

Hawthorne    had    the    -.oul  and  the  outlook    ol    .1 
poet.          1  n      hi  .     st<  'i  y       "    The      <  iival 

I  In    rxln  in. 

in  n  .i\\iii..ii..       Stone     li%.ice "    he    says:    "The    \\oild 
uiiiMTne.  .  .         . 

assumed    another    ami   a    net  ter  aspect 

hom    the    hour    that    the    poet     blessed    it   with    hr. 
happs    eyes.       The    C'n.iloi    had   be\low«-d    him,    as 


/A,.-,.///,,///,'.  .<.,.; 

ill,-   List    hesl    Ion.  h   lo   hi-,    own     handiwoil.         (    H.I 
(ion    Was   no)    Inn  six  d    till    the     pnel      came     (n     ml-   i 
j,i  et,     and     SO     compleh-     it."         A<  <  oidm;;     to     t  hr. 
delinilinn,     wln<  h     ihe     wiiler,     nl     course,    had    no 
ilion-hi    of    applying    to    hinr.ell,     llawllmine    did 
hless    ihe     woild     with     happy    eyes,   mierpn-l    and 

enmplele  iM.illon.  In  him  I  lie  universe  \v.r.  .1 
|o\-e|y  ihiii"  ol  peienm.d  h.  .inly,  to  he  enjoyed 
and  valued  lor  it-,  own  :>ake,  and  lor  the  pleasure 
ol  men  exislence.  'Mir.  w.r.  no  lo'.l  world,  Im 
i .  -|i-  •  inn  •.  .in.  I  n  i  eh"  loir,  pessimists  and  aj-nn  ,1  i.  . 
to  pi.iiir.e  iln  n  wir.  mi,  hni  a  veritahle  earthly 
p.n.i.h.e.  "  |  hen-  is  nn  deeay.  l'.a<h  human 
-.onl  is  the  hi  si  <  rented  inhahilanl  nl  its  own 
K<|en.  We  dwell  in  an  old  moss  covered  man 
•.inn,  and  head  in  ihe  wni  n  footprints  ol  ihe  p.r.l. 
and  have  <t  ••  i  .1  -,  .  1.  i  •-  -,  m, ill's  "Imsl  lor  our  d.nly 
and  ni-dilly  inmate;  yel  all  these  onlwanl  <  in  nm 
slames  are  made  less  than  visionary  hy  the 

]<||<    will"      pnw»    I     ol      the      Spllll.          SllOllld      ll»e     spllll 

evei  lose  tins  power,  should  the  withered  leaves, 
and  the  rotten  hi. MM  IM  ,,  and  tin-  moss  covered 
house,  and  tin-  jdiosl  nl  I!M  -1.1  ,  |>asl  •  vei  heroine 

its  I  ealil  ies,  ..lid  I  he  Vei  dllie  .Hid  I  IK  In  sltlM  SH 
merely  it  ,  (.mil  di  earn,  I  lien  let  it  play  to  he 
rel(  ased  from  earth. "H  I  lawthoim  '•.  "  New  Adam 
and  h.ve"  h'dil  he.uledly  "tread  aloir<  I!K  wind 
in"  p.ilhs  amoii"  ni.nhle  pill. us,  IIIIIIIM  temples, 
m  us,  ohehsks,  and  sar<  nphajM,  SOIIH  I  HIM  .  |».iir.m}(( 
In  <  nnli  -mpl.it  e  ihese  (.Hit.i  .M  ,  nl  human  ;.'inwlh, 
and  snmel  DIMS  in  admin:  the  llnw«-is  v/h-  i  •  wil  I. 

*  "  Jhi<b  ;ui»l  Hiid  VolCfi."  "MOMfl  from  Ml  Old     '  J    ' 


344  American  Literature. 

nature  converts  decay  to  loveliness."  Mere 
beauty,  joy,  happiness,  to  be  followed  instinctively, 
are  at  one  side,  and  that  the  greater  side,  of 
Hawthorne's  universe.  Toward  these  all  things 
ultimately  ought  to  tend.  At  the  other  extreme 
from  this  heaven  is  the  hell  he  so  often  described,^ 
and  which  he  portrayed  in  thirty  words  when  he 
told  us,  in  one  of  his  note  books,  that  "  at  the  last 
day — when  we  see  ourselves  as  we  are — man's 
only  inexorable  judge  will  be  himself,  and  the 
punishment  of  his  sins  will  be  the  perception  of 
them."  To  and  fro  men  pass,  now  hither,  now 
thither,  into  the  shadow  or  into  the  sun,  and 
Hawthorne  follows  them  with  the  serene  eyes  of 
a  regretful  or  joyous  observer  and  chronicler,  but 
not  with  the  feelings  of  the  embittered  or  morbid 
spectator  in  the  search  of  mere  literary  material 
for  woeful  romance. 

Hawthorne  never  shared,  and  indeed  must  have 
despised,  the  silly  and  sickly  sentimentalism  of 
Attitude  in  the  ^e  period  in  which  his  literary  life 

sentimental  era.  kegaru        Jt     wag     jfo    tjme at    ]east    Jfl 

verse  and  in  fiction — of  bowers,  and  casements, 
and  tresses,  and  wafting  breezes,  and  tears,  and 
sighs ;  when  Vice  had  horns  and  a  tail  and  a 
sulphurous  breath,  and  when  sugary  Virtue,  on  the 
other  hand,  was  equally  impossible  and  almost 
equally  repulsive.  Hawthorne  was  as  far  from 
prudery  as  he  was  from  baseness.  His  soul  was 
a  wholesome  one,  and  it  was  a  soul  not  content 
with  superficiality,  whether  of  the  good  or  of  the 
bad  things  in  life.  As  an  author,  his  sunshine 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  345 

was  brighter  and  his  shadows  darker  than  those 
of  most  novelists,  for  they  were  the  sunshine  and 
shadows  of  real  life,  and  not  of  a  pallid  or  Utopian 
picture.  When  the  heroines  of  other  story-tellers 
were  bursting  into  tears  every  page  or  tw^fcA 
Hawthorne's  Hester  Prynne  was  walking  in  the 
loneliness  and  silence  of  majestic  sorrow  and 
voiceless  remorse.  When  the  guitars  of  the 
pseudo-Spanish  heroines  of  the  day  were  tinkling 
from  the  lattices  portrayed  in  the  steel-engravings 
then  so  popular,  his  Phcebe  Pyncheon  was  show 
ing  American  readers  the  fresh  and  lovely  grace 
of  a  true  little  Massachusetts  maiden  of  the 
Puritan  stock.  Other  novelists  of  his  native  land 
went  hunting  all  afield  for  types,  and  plots,  and 
backgrounds  ; (Hawthorne  took  those  amid  which 
he  had  grown*  up,  and  which  he  had  studied  as 
deeply  and  quietly^s  Thoreau  studied  the  depths 
.of  Walden  Pond,  or  the  depths  of  the  sky  above. 
His  world  was  the  world  of  his  place  and  time, 
but  its  light  and  air  were  those  which  surround  all 

o 

humanity.  From  one  he  learned  all ;  in  his  way 
he  unconsciously  heeded  that  advice  of  Emerson's, 
which  was  found  among  the  philosopher's  man 
uscripts  :  he  told  men  what  they  knew  before,  he 
painted  the  prospect  from  their  door.  Men  had 
known  more  than  they  could  express,  Hawthorne's 
and  more  than  they  had  read  in  other  outlook. 
books  ;  so  Hawthorne  reaped  the  reward  of  the 
imaginative  genius  who  states  or  portrays  what 
others  have  but  felt.  As  a  large  literary  creator, 
accordingly,  no  other  American  occupies  a  place 


346  American  Literature. 

so  high,  and  no  other  is  so  worthy  of  mention  in 
the  study  of  the  world's  best  literature. 

The  writings  of  Hawthorne  are,  as  a  whole,  of 
such  uniform  merit  that  it  is  not  easy  to  select 
illustrative  specimens  of  characteristic  signifi 
cance,  as  far  as  thought  or  literary  style  is  con 
cerned.  Though  he  exercised  an  unusual  free 
dom  in  the  use  of  new  or  unfamiliar  phrases,  and 
in  coining  words,  the  charm  of  expression  is  sel 
dom  absent  from  his  later  writings,  and  often 
appears  even  in  his  earliest.  It  is  more  important 
to  note  that  the  broad  general  method  of  all  his 
books  is  likewise  a  method  showing  few  variations 
between  1828,  with  its  crude  little  romance  of 
Bowdoin,  and  1864,  with  its  unfinished  "  Alad 
din's  tower"  of  the  author's  fiction.  Hawthorne's 
just  judgment  of  his  own  genius  and  powers  of 
expression — a  judgment  illustrated  in  his  long 
self-imposed  novitiate,  and  strengthened  thereby 
— enabled  him  to  think  and  write  with  unusual 
freedom  from  the  ill  effects  of  fashion,  greed,  or 
prejudice.  In  this  respect  he  resembled  Emer 
son,  from  whom  he  differed  widely  in  most  of  his 
mental  characteristics.  But  I  believe  that  it  is 
possible  to  select  from  his  works  one  short  tale 
which  is  a  microcosm  of  his  mind  and  art.  From 
the  patient  study  of  such  a  story  as  that  of 
"  Ethan  Brand,"  in  the  volume  entitled  "  The 
Snow-Image,  and  Other  Twice-Told  Tales" 
(1851),  may  be  derived  a  deeper  and  more  com 
prehensive  knowledge  of  his  true  literary  life  than 
from  any  voluminous  record  of  dates,  doings,  and 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  347 

titles.  It  contains  a  picture  of  the  soul  and  body 
of  the  author's  work,  and  may  well  be  taken  in 
hand  as  the  alpha  of  Hawthorne's  alphabet,  by 
those — if  such  there  be — as  yet  unfamiliar  with  his 
method  and  expression  as  an  author,  or  by  those 
who  have  read  him  merely  in  a  superficial  way, 
without  noting  the  deeper  elements  in  the  several 
stories  and  romances.  Hawthorne's  whole  philos 
ophy  of  life,  and  his  point  of  view,  may  Philos0phy 
here  be  noted  and  studied  within  the  oflife< 
compass  of  no  more  than  twenty-two  pages.  This 
"  chapter  from  an  abortive  romance,"  as  the 
author  modestly  terms  it  in  the  sub-title,  is  in 
reality  so  rounded  and  complete  that  it  needs  no 
apology,  but  rather  a  duly  thoughtful  attention. 
Of  it  Mrs.  Hawthorne  wrote  to  her  mother  in 
December,  1848:  "It  is  a  tremendous  truth, 
written,  as  he  often  writes  truth,  with  characters 
of  fire,  upon  an  infinite  gloom, — softened  so  as 
not  wholly  to  terrify,  by  divine  touches  of  beauty, 
—revealing  pictures  of  nature,  and  also  the  tender 
spirit  of  a  child."  * 

Hawthorne  was  a  pioneer  and  master  of  that 
literary  method  which,  under  the  name  of  realism, 
has  so  strongly  affected  the  fiction  of  the  lat 
ter  part  of  the  nineteenth  century.  He  studied 
minutely,  and  portrayed  with  delicate 

r    •  i_  r    i  tin  Hawthorne  a 

faithfulness,  the  smallest  flower  beneath     realist  and 

.   .       r  .,         c    .  ,  .     ,    .          .          , .  an  idealist. 

his  loot,  the  lamtest  bird  in  the  distant 

sky,  the  trivial  mark  or  the  seemingly  unimportant 

act  of   the   person    described.       The    microscopic 

*  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  and  his  Wife,"  by  Julian  Hawthorne;  i,  330-331. 


348  American  Literature. 

artist  was  not  more  faithful  in  noting  little  charac 
teristics  or  swiftly-fleeting  marks.  Such  sketches 
as  "  A  Rill  from  the  Town  Pump,"  "  Main  Street," 
"  Sights  from  a  Steeple,"  or  "  Little  Annie's  Ram 
ble  "  are  realism  in  its  complete  estate.  Tour- 
gueneff  himself,  the  prototype  of  so  many  follow 
ers  in  Russia,  France,  and  America,  is  not  more 
watchful  with  the  eye  or  more  painstaking  with 
the  pen.  But  between  Hawthorne  and  Tour- 
gueneff  there  is  an  unlikeness  as  marked  as  their 
.external  similarity  of  method.  Hawthorne,  a 
realist  in  portrayal,  is  a  thorough  idealist  in 
thought  and  purpose.  The  weariness  and  mel 
ancholy  of  Russian  life  and  literature  are  nowhere 
present  in  his  writings.  Tourgueneffs  exquisite 
"  Poems  in  Prose  "  virtually  end  with  the  query  of 
that  weakly  pessimistic  song  the  burden  of  which 
is  :  "  What  is  it  all  when  all  is  done  ?"  "  In  Haw 
thorne's  books,  to  be  sure,  are  the  profoundest 
sin,  the  deepest  veil  of  misery  and  mystery,  the 
infinite  gloom  of  which  Mrs.  Hawthorne  wrote ; 
but  always  above  them  the  tremendous  truth 
written  with  characters  of  fire,  and  yet  with 
"  divine  touches  of  beauty,"  with  many  a  picture 
of  artlessly  lovely  nature  and  life,  and  with  the 
tender  spirit  of  a  child  pervading  the  whole.  At 
the  close  of  Tourgueneff's  portrayals  silently  falls 
the  black  impenetrable  curtain  through  which  we 
may  not  peer,  behind  which  there  is  nothing. 
But  in  Hawthorne's  pages,  beyond  the  blackness 
and  woe  of  sin  and  of  slow  spiritual  suicide,  are 
the  glow  and  the  glory  of  the  triumph  that  fol- 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  349 

lows  the  struggle  ;  of  the  proved  virtue  that  is 
better  than  untried  innocence,  and  of  the  eternity 
that  tells  the  meaning  of  time. 

The  method  of  elaboration  of  the  idea  of 
"Ethan  Brand"  is  definite.  The  plot  of  the 
story  seems  simplicity  itself.  It  is  Hawthorne's 
usual  plan  to  take  a  single  thought  and  develop 
it  by  the  aid  of  an  uncomplicated  machinery. 
Here,  as  in  so  many  other  cases,  he  . 

'  '  A  Hawthorne 

introduces  few  characters,  and  describes     microcosm: 

the  story  of 

no  more  than  one  or  two  scenes,  at  the          "Ethan 

.    .  Brand." 

same  time  contriving  to  suggest  leagues 
of  wandering  and  years  of  passing  time.  In  one 
of  his  earlier  walks  in  Berkshire  County,  Massa 
chusetts,  Hawthorne  had  come  upon  a  lime-kiln, 
luridly  and  picturesquely  burning  against  the  sky 
of  night  ;  and  in  his  note-book  for  1838  is  re 
corded,  at  some  length,  its  appearance  in  the 
mind  of  the  watchful  young  romancer.  From  the 
memory  of  this  lime-kiln  gradually  grew  the  story 
of  Ethan  Brand,  the  man  with  the  heart  of  stone. 
Around  its  central  character  are  grouped  the  lime- 
burner  Bartram,  rough  but  not  unkindly  ;  his  lit 
tle  son,  with  the  innocent  curiosity  of  childhood, 
pure  amid  grime  and  dirt ;  the  motley  group  of 
village  worthies  :  the  bibulous  and  broken-down 
lawyer,  the  coarse  doctor  of  the  period  when  bru 
tality  was  deemed  requisite  in  the  practice  of  med 
icine,  the  withered  village  wit,  and  the  poor  old 
white-haired  man,  whose  daughter  and  whose 
mind  had  been  stolen  away  by  the  evil  Ethan. 
As  though  these  were  not  enough  to  heighten  the 


35°  American  Literature. 

tragedy  of  the  story,  by  their  more  superficial 
and  yet  equally  miserable  badness,  we  have  also, 
against  the  solemn  background  of  the  hills,  a  Ger 
man  Jew  with  his  little  diorama  of  the  wonders  of 
all  the  distant  world,  and  his  solemn-foolish  old 
dog.  Behind  them  all,  in  the  aloofness  of  blacker 
and  more  deliberate  sin,  is  Ethan  Brand,  who 
returns  from  a  world-search  for  selfish  intellectual 
triumph,  to  find  the  Unpardonable  Sin  in  his  own 
breast.  Tenderness,  sympathy,  and  love  he  had 
deliberately  crushed  down ;  the  mind  he  had 
made  everything,  the  heart  nothing,  and  thus  he 
had  become  a  fiend.  The  ablest  theologians  who 
have  speculated  upon  the  nature  of  that  "  sin 
against  the  Holy  Ghost,"  which  shall  be  forgiven 
neither  in  this  world  nor  in  the  world  to  come, 
have  concluded  that  it  consists  of  a  persistent 
barring-out  of  good  influences  and  good  desires. 
As  long  as  the  soul  is  free,  such  a  barring-out  of 
good  must  be  effectual,  and  cannot  be  mitigated 
until  the  soul  rights  itself  of  its  own  motion.  It 
may,  indeed,  notwithstanding  the  love  of  the 
Divine  for  the  creature,  go  so  far  that  here  or 
hereafter  the  very  heart  becomes  stony  and 
bloodless.  This  is  the  lesson  of  "  Ethan  Brand," 
stated  more  powerfully  than  ever  a  theologian 
stated  it.  Hawthorne's  creed  is  as  universal  as 
the  needs  of  man  ;  he  has  no  theological  axe  to 
grind,  wherewith  to  behead  dissentient  heretics  ; 
he  is  a  literary  artist,  not  a  professional  sermon- 
izer ;  and  certainly  he  is  above  the  accusation  of 
the  Pharisaic  egotism  of  those  who  think  the 


universe 
of  morals. 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  351 

Deity  under  obligation  to  manage  the  world 
according  to  the  scheme  of  their  sect.  But  the 
eternal  and  apparently  inexorable  truths  of  the 
moral  universe  he  knew  and  believed  as  The 
truly  as  he  knew  and  believed  the  super 
nal  beauty  of  creation  and  the  yearning  love  of  a 
Creator  who  stands  ready  to  forgive  whenever  a 
soul  turns  to  him. 

On  a  single  page  at  the  close  of  this  story  is 
the  contrast  between  the  two  phases  of  truth. 
Ethan  Brand  has  cast  himself  into  the  kiln,  and 
on  the  calcined  dust  lies  his  snow-white  skeleton, 
within  the  ribs  of  which  is  the  marble  shape  of  a 
human  heart.  But  little  Joe  skips  hap-  The  stony 
pily  about,  and  cries :  "  Dear  father,  that  heart- 
strange  man  is  gone,  and  the  sky  and  the  moun 
tains  all  seem  glad  of  it ! "  And  meanwhile  the 
serenity  and  loveliness  of  the  world  are  portrayed 
with  that  dainty  touch  which  suggests,  not  argues, 
in  the  picture  of  the  surrounding  landscape  : 

The  early  sunshine  was  already  pouring  its  gold  upon  the 
mountain-tops ;  and  though  the  valleys  were  still  in  shadow 
they  smiled  cheerfully  in  the  promise  of  the  bright  day  that  was 
hastening  onward.  The  village,  completely  shut  in  by  hills, 
which  swelled  away  gently  about  it,  looked  as  if  it  had  rested 
peacefully  in  the  hollow  of  the  great  hand  of  Providence. 
Every  dwelling  was  distinctly  visible  ;  the  little  spires  of  the  two 
churches  pointed  upwards,  and  caught  a  fore-glimmering  of 
brightness  from  the  sun-gilt  skies  upon  their  gilded  weather 
cocks Old  Graylock  was  glorified  with  a  golden  cloud 

upon  his  head.  Scattered  likewise  over  the  breasts  of  the  sur 
rounding  mountains,  there  were  heaps  of  hoary  mist,  in  fantas 
tic  shapes,  some  of  them  far  down  into  the  valley,  others  high 
up  towards  the  summits,  and  still  others,  of  the  same  family  of 


352  American  Literature. 

mist  or  cloud,  hovering  in  the  gold  radiance  of  the  upper  atmos 
phere.  Stepping  from  one  to  another  of  the  clouds  that  rested 
on  the  hills,  and  thence  to  the  loftier  brotherhood  that  sailed 
in  air,  it  seemed  almost  as  if  a  mortal  man  might  thus  ascend 
into  the  heavenly  regions.  Earth  was  so  mingled  with  sky  that 
it  was  a  day-dream  to  look  at  it. 

This  idea  of  the  homeward-coming  of  a  world- 
wanderer  was  used  by  Hawthorne  in  another  of 
44  The  Three-  h^5  significant  stories,  "The  Three 
fold  Destiny."  fold  Destiny,"  in  "Twice-told  Tales." 
This  "Threefold  Destiny"  is  really  the  counter 
part  of  "  Ethan  Brand,"  though  we  have  no  indi 
cation  that  the  author  designed  the  two  to  bear  a 
complementary  relation.  The  art  of  "  The 
Threefold  Destiny,"  though  not  of  the  highest, 
has  been  so  obvious  that  the  story  has  won  con 
siderable  favor  in  France,  where  literary  form  is 
so  generally  demanded ;  yet  spirit  dominates 
style,  as  in  "  Ethan  Brand."  But  notwithstanding 
its  apt  title  and  its  relative  success  as  compared 
with  some  similar  ambitious  undertakings  by 
other  hands,  "The  Threefold  Destiny,"  as  a  piece 
of  literature,  is  decidedly  inferior  to  "  Ethan 
Brand,"  and  cannot  be  considered  one  of  Haw 
thorne's  greater  products.  It  illustrates  his  great 
general  method,  but  not  his  highest  achievement. 
The  plot  is  suggestive.  Cranfield,  the  central 
figure  of  the  tale,  wanders  far  from  his  village 
home,  in  search  of  world-wide  fame  and  com 
manding  station,  a  mysterious  treasure,  and  an 
ideal  love  ;  he  returns  to  teach  the  little  school 
near  at  hand,  to  till  the  poor  patch  of  ground  on 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  353 

which  he  was  born,  and  to  wed  a  childhood  play 
mate.  The  application  follows:  "Would  all,  who 
cherish  such  wild  wishes,  but  look  around  them, 
they  would  oftenest  find  their  sphere  of  duty,  of 
prosperity,  and  happiness  within  those  precincts, 
and  in  that  station  where  Providence  has  cast 
their  lot.  Happy  they  who  read  the  riddle,  with 
out  a  weary  world-search,  or  a  lifetime  spent  in 


vain." 


In  this  story  we  perceive  the  ill  effects  which 
often  attend  an  attempted  union  between  the 
didactic  and  the  artistic.  It  must  definitely  be 
recognized  and  stated  that  in  "  The  Threefold 
Destiny "  the  decoration  and  construction  suffer 
at  the  hands  of  the  ethical  purpose.  The  moral 
is  somewhat  rudely  thrown  in  the  reader's  face  at 
the  close.  We  asked  for  a  story,  and  we  got  a 
"Sunday-school  book"  instead.  Hawthorne,  for 
once,  seems  like  a  professional  or  salaried  moral- 
izer;  and  we  feel  a  little  inclined,  in  this  instance, 
to  read  what  he  has  to  say,  and  then  go  and 
follow  our  own  will,  though  it  take  us  to  the  end 
of  the  earth  instead  of  to  our  mother's  kitchen- 
garden  or  the  village  school.  What  is  natural  in 
Miss  Edgeworth  seems  foreign  in  Hawthorne, 
whose  usual  delicacy  of  touch  and  suggestiveness 
of  style  apparently  desert  him  at  the  climax. 
This  semi-clerical  manner  is  here  not  coincident 
with  any  proper  success  in  ideal  fiction.  The 
reader  is  half  ready  at  the  close,  to  rise  for  the 
benediction,  when  the  "application"  and  the 
"aspiration"  have  been  duly  uttered.  But  the 
23 


354 


American  Literature. 


central  idea  of  the  story  remains  significant.  It  is 
closely  united  to  Hawthorne's  usual  method,  in 
which  he  seldom  made  failures.  It  is  no  easy 
task  to  be  uniformly  spiritual  and  uniformly 
artistic,  but  Hawthorne  very  nearly  achieved  this"" 
task.  We  can  more  readily  forgive  him  for  a 
comparatively  poor  story,  now  and  then,  than  for 
any  repeated  infidelity  to  a  method  at  once  spon 
taneous  and  high,  in  which  he  won  a  success  not 
achieved  by  any  other  English-speaking  novelist 
of  the  century.  His  deliberate  choice  of  his  place 
in  literature  was  made  in  full  recognition  of  his 
powers  and  preference,  as  well  as  of  the  universal 
relation  between  external  artistic  creation  and  its 
guiding  purpose  within.  The  literary  centuries 
are  strewn  with  failures  in  attempts  like  his ; 
"The  Threefold  Destiny"  —by  no  means  an  out 
right  failure — merely  reminds  us  that  its  author 
was  fallible,  and  heightens  his  general  success  by 
the  passing  shade  of  an  occasional  un  worth  in  ess. 

In  the  previous  volume  of  this  history  I  inci 
dentally  mentioned  three  of  Hawthorne's  short 
stories,  including  the  two  just  considered,  as  those 
in  which  the  student  could  at  length  perceive  the 
firm  purpose  underlying  the  enduring  art.  The 
third  member  of  this  trilogy — of  my  choice,  not 
"Lad  °^  t^le  auth°r's  arrangement — is  "  Lady 
Eieanore's  Eleanore's  Mantle,"  one  of  the  "  Legends 
of  the  Province  House,"  in  the  second 
volume  of  "  Twice-Told  Tales."  Turning  thereto, 
the  reader  finds  a  plan  essentially  similar,  in 
broad  conception,  to  those  of  the  other  allegories, 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  355 

but  expressed  in  an  art  so  admirable  as  almost  to 
tempt  one  to  use  the  adjective  perfect.  In  such  a 
story  as  this  Hawthorne  appears  at  his  best. 
The  sombre  background  of  early  Puritan  Massa 
chusetts  ;  the  Boston  of  the  days  when  grim 
democratic  Calvinism  struggled  with  the  consid 
erable  grandeur  of  wealth  and  a  provincial  court ; 
a  few  strangely-romantic  characters  standing 
plainly  against  the  horizon  of  the  familiar  sky,  yet 
seen  through  the  dimmed  light  of  the  intervening 
years  that  so  completely  separate  the  old  from  the 
new — all  these  things  Hawthorne  could  use 
far  more  powerfully  than  any  other  American. 

Some  critics  have  lamented  that  Hawthorne,  so 
equipped  with  the  strength  and  weapons  of  a 
genius,  lacked  the  historic  background  Hawthorne's 
which  a  great  romancer  should  enjoy.  background- 
They  have  actually  apologized  for  the  poverty  of 
the  materials  which  he  was  forced  to  use.  On 
the  contrary,  it  seems  to  me  that  he  found  at 
hand  scenes  possessing  remarkable  capabilities 
for  literary  treatment ;  strong  and  forceful  char 
acters  never  before  portrayed;  and  (because  of 
the  vast  changes  caused  by  the  Revolution)  a 
sufficient  remoteness  of  time.  Castles,  draw 
bridges,  black  forests,  tournaments,  battles,  and 
knights  and  dames  had  been  used  so  often  that 
none  but  a  Scott  could  longer  make  them  interest 
ing.  But  houses  of  seven  gables  ;  witch-haunted 
Puritan  villages,  fringed  by  native  woods  from 
which  the  Indians  had  scarcely  fled ;  soul-conflicts 
of  stern  dogmatists ;  heart-sorrows  of  men  and 


356  American  Liter  attire. 

women  whose  lives  were  forced  back  into  their 
own  selves  ;  lovely  little  maidens  from  whom  the 
poetry  of  nature  could  not  be  taken  away ; 
children  as  pure  as  the  field-springs  or  half-hidden 
violets  amid  which  they  played,  were  unfamiliar 
in  English  fiction  before  Hawthorne.  Irving  in 
his  Hudson  stories,  or  Cooper  in  his  Indian  tales, 
was  not  more  fortunate  in  theme  nor  more  orig 
inal  in  treatment ;  while  Poe,  the  only  other 
American  novelist  worth  mentioning  in  a  chapter 
devoted  to  Hawthorne,  did  not  find  Ghostland 
itself  a  better  artistic  background  than  Salem  or 
Concord. 

If  it  be  an  advantage  for  a  novelist  to  follow 
other  great  workers  in  the  same  field,  then  Haw 
thorne  lacked  such  advantage.  But  the  great 
Creator,  not  creator,  whether  he  be  novelist  or  poet, 
follower.  does  not  need  prototypes  and  fore 
runners.  He  avails  himself  freely  of  the  lessons 
and  the  work  of  his  predecessors,  but  he  is  under 
no  more  than  minor  obligations  to  them.  The 
man  of  genius  is  injured  by  following  others, 
quite  as  truly  as  he  is  helped.  A  similar  remark 
may  be  made  concerning  the  picturesque  or 
imposing  historic  background  of  literature.  Such 
a  background,  in  an  ancient  country,  is  pretty  sure 
to  be  an  unduly  familiar  one.  A  genius,  in  point 
of  fact,  takes  his  background  where  he  finds  it ;  if 
at  home,  and  still  comparatively  unknown,  he 
follows  his  national  bent  and  local  inspiration ;  if 
not,  he  forages  all  afield,  without  complaining  of 
the  disadvantages  of  his  surroundings.  When 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  357 

Hawthorne  chose,  he  made  solemn  and  august 
Rome  his  background  ;  for  the  most  part,  how 
ever,  he  was  glad  to  employ  the  singularly  rich 
unused  realm  close  at  hand.  It  is  the  weaker 
novelist  that  is  most  concerned  to  find  a  fit  setting 
for  his  plot ;  a  mind  like  Hawthorne's  possesses 
the  element  of  large  natural  spontaneity  which 
characterizes  the  world-author  as  distinct  from 
the  provincialist.  A  Dante  is  Italian,  a  Goethe  is 
German,  and  even  a  Shakespeare  is  intensely 
English  ;  but  in  their  writings  the  local  typifies 
the  general.  To  the  statement,  then,  that  Haw 
thorne  was  imprisoned  or  disadvantaged  by  his 
environment,  a  double  reply  can  be  made  :  first, 
that  he  found  at  hand  a  rich  and  virgin  field,  well 
suited  to  the  nature  of  his  working  genius ;  and 
second,  that  his  powers  of  invention  and  assimila 
tion  were  too  great  to  be  crushed  down  by 
adverse  conditions,  had  such  surrounded  him. 
Indeed,  Hawthorne  was  related  to  his  background 
as  closely  as  flower  to  root,  so  naturally  did  he 
grow  from  it  and  so  truly  did  he  represent  it  to 
the  beholder's  eye. 

To  return  to  "  Lady  Eleanore's  Mantle "  :  the 
story  is  vivid  in  its  historic  pictures,  romantic  in  its 
plot,  and  adequate  in  its  perception  and  portrayal 
of  the  emotions,  which  are  the  real  theme  of  the 
highest  fiction  written  during  the  present  century. 
Its  thought  is  the  curse  brought  by  a  lovely  but 
heartless  woman,  who  wrapped  herself  in  pride  as 
in  a  mantle,  and  whose  mantle  literally  became 
the  source  of  pestilence  to  herself  and  to  the 


358  American  Literature. 

whole  community.  The  episode,  in  other  hands, 
might  have  been  treated  feebly  or  repulsively ;  its 
success  might  have  been  moral  or  perhaps 
sanitary  rather  than  properly  artistic ;  but  in 
Hawthorne's  pages  the  stately  and  the  horrible, 
the  external  and  the  internal,  are  presented  in  a 
literary  union  of  which  the  reader  notes  the 
admirable  whole  rather  than  the  patiently  wrought 
details.  The  work  of  the  brain  is  concealed  by 
the  artist  who  is  content  to  display  the  finished 
product  ;  ars  est  celare  artem.  Hawthorne  has 
indeed  shown  us,  in  his  note-books,  much  of  his 
mental  habit  and  method  of  observation  and 
elaboration  ;  but  in  his  completed  work,  here  and 
elsewhere,  the  means  seldom  cloud  the  literary 
result.  One  might  go  still  farther,  and  add  that 
the  style  itself  is  so  transparent  that  we  instantly 
note  the  thought  and  afterward — if  at  all — the 
expression. 

The  powers  of  Hawthorne,  thus  displayed  in 
short  stories,  were  made  more  broadly  and  largely, 
though  not  more  truly,  manifest  in  his  romances. 
It  often  happens  that  a  good  writer  of  short 
stories  is  unable  to  produce  a  praiseworthy  novel 
Hawthorne's  or  romance,  while  the  creator  of  a 
romances.  meritorious  novel  cannot,  or  does  not, 
represent  his  powers  within  a  narrow  space.  The 
history  of  literature  readily  affords  illustrations  of 
this  truth.  We  do  not  need  to  search  beyond  the 
brief  period  of  American  literature  to  prove  it,  for 
we  were  given  no  valuable  novel  or  romance  by 
the  hand  of  Irving  or  Poe,  and  no  good  short 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  359 

story  by  that  of  Cooper.  Hawthorne,  however, 
having  won  a  true  and  high  (though  not  widely 
apparent)  place  as  a  story-writer,  produced  his 
first  romance  in  middle  life,  and  thereafter 
achieved  his  broadest  fame  as  the  author  of  "  The 
Scarlet  Letter,"  "The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables," 
"The  Blithedale  Romance,"  and  "The  Marble 
Faun,"  rather  than  "  Twice-Told  Tales  "  or 
"  Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse."  Notwithstanding 
the  obvious  merits  of  "  The  House  of  the  Seven 
Gables"  and  "The  Blithedale  Romance,"  it  is 
evident  that  "The  Scarlet  Letter"  and  "The 
Marble  Faun  "  are  conceived  in  a  nobler  manner. 
The  first  of  the  two,  in  important  particulars,  is 
the  greatest  book  Hawthorne  ever  wrote,  though 
comparison  between  it  and  some  of  his  other 
writings — even  with  the  best  of  the  short  stories — 
is  neither  easy  nor  valuable  in  its  results.  To 
label  books  or  pictures  or  musical  compositions 
in  order  of  merit  is  not  an  undertaking  to  be  fol 
lowed  uniformly,  nor  does  it  invariably  illuminate 
the  study  of  the  productions  in  question.  What 
ever  be  the  estimate  of  the  relative  rank  of  those 
rounded  romances,  it  is  evident  that,  the  merit  of 
the  work  of  the  author  of  "Ethan  Brand" 
increased  in  proportion  to  his  breadth  of  scope — 
in  availing  himself  of  which,  of  course,  he 
avoided  unwisdom  in  the  relations  of  plot  to 
length,  and  of  his  subject  to  his  known  powers. 
At  first,  I  admit,  a  contemporary  critic  would 
hardly  have  prophesied  success  for  Hawthorne's 
later  books,  which  now  seem  the  greater  in  both 


360  American  Liter  at2ire. 

senses  of  the  adjective.  That  their  success  was 
won  was  due  to  the  fact  of  Hawthorne's  compre 
hensive  humanity, — to  his  outreaching  human 
tenderness  as  truly  as  to  his  dramatic  observation 
and  art. 

In  "Our  Old  Home"  Hawthorne  tells  us  of  a 
visit  paid  by  several  persons  of  his  party  to  an 
Hawthorne's  English  workhouse.  A  wretched  child, 
humanity.  t^e  offspring  of  utter  degradation  and 
the  representative  of  generations  of  depravity, 
insisted  upon  attaching  itself  to  a  gentleman  of 
the  party.  Its  miserable  little  body  was  but  a 
living  mass  of  repulsiveness,  but  its  dim  eyes, 
bleared  even  in  infancy,  recognized  in  the  kindly 
man  an  affection  of  which  it  demanded  an  out 
ward  expression.  The  man  was  singularly  re 
pelled  by  the  physically  horrible,  but  he  mastered 
his  prejudice  and  gave  the  child  the  love  it  craved, 
taking  it  up  and  caressing  it  as  tenderly  as  if  he 
had  been  its  father.  As  we  read  the  closing  sen 
tence  of  the  description  we  do  not  find  it  hard  to 
think  of  the  general  purpose  of  the  series  of  books 
beginning  with  "  Fanshawe "  and  ending  with 
"The  Dolliver  Romance":  "No  doubt  the 
child's  mission  in  reference  to  our  friend  was  to 
remind  him  that  he  was  responsible,  in  his  degree, 
for  all  the  sufferings  and  misdemeanors  of  the 
world  in  which  he  lived,  and  was  not  entitled  to 
look  upon  a  particle  of  its  dark  calamity  as  if  it 
were  none  of  his  concern  :  the  offspring  of  a 
brother's  iniquity  being  his  own  blood-relation, 
and  the  guilt,  likewise,  a  burden  on  him,  unless  he 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  361 

expiated  it  by  better  deeds."  Years  after  this 
friend's  body  was  laid  in  the  grave,  we  were  told 
that  his  earthly  name  was  Nathaniel  Hawthorne. 

I  connect  this  story  with  a  strictly  literary 
criticism  because  Hawthorne's  humanity  was  the 
basis  of  his  success  as  the  romancer  of  the  hum-an^ 
heart.  As  tenderly  sympathetic  as  Irving,  he 
possessed  a  strength  of  stroke  that  Irving  lacked. 
As  original  a  creator  as  Cooper,  he  measured  his 
own  powers  with  a  justice  in  significant  contrast 
with  Cooper's  grotesque  misapprehension  of  him 
self.  As  true  an  artist  as  Poe,  his  heart  and  head 
so  combined  as  to  lead  him  to  life  itself,  and  not 
to  the  shadowed  land  between  life  and  death. 
Therefore  Hawthorne,  and  not  Irving,  Cooper,  or 
Poe,  is  the  chief  writer  of  fiction  yet  produced  in 
America. 

Thus  far  have  I  proceeded  without  more  than 
incidental  reference  to  the  chronology  of  Haw 
thorne's  career  because  it  seems  to  me  that  the 
art-product,  in  this  instance,  demands  attention 
before  the  man  ;  not  only  because  it  is  his  per 
manent  literary  legacy,  self-contained  and  self- 
explanatory,  but  because  it  illuminates  the  whole 
story  of  his  personal  life.  On  the  foundation 
thus  laid,  our  study  of  his  career  may  now  turn 
somewhat  more  definitely  to  his  sixty  years,  with 
their  literary  gifts  to  the  world  of  readers. 

Hawthorne  was  born  in  a  plain  old  house,  not 
over-large,  in  what  is  now  a  by-street  of  Salem, 
Massachusetts.  The  city  of  Salem,  near  enough 


362  American  Literature. 

to    Boston  to  share  some  part  of  its  life,    is    yet 
so   far  removed  as  to  be  able  to  follow 

Nathaniel  .      . 

Hawthorne,    an  independent  existence  of  its  own,  pre- 
1804-1864.  .  .  i  .          1-1 

serving,    with    a   tenacity  which  a  mere 

suburb  must  lose,  those  peculiar  characteristics 
which  it  has  retained  without  essential  alteration 
for  two  centuries  and  a  half.  English  intelli 
gence,  here  transplanted  in  sea-coast  soil,  has  long 
dominated  a  society  perhaps  peculiarly  courtly, 
and  certainly  rich  in  that  gentle  blood  and 
thoughtful  brain  and  which  constitute  the  proper 
American  aristocracy.  The  old  seaport,  in  1804, 
could  boast  of  money,  of  spoils  of  extensive 
commerce,  and  families  prominent  because  of 
downright  ability.  Hawthorne's  personal  career 
in  Salem,  by  an  experience  not  unusual,  was 
hardly  so  agreeable  to  himself  or  to  his  fellow- 
citizens  as  it  would  have  been  had  he  followed 
the  pursuits  of  a  merchant,  an  attorney,  or  even  a 
Hawthorne's  village  politician.  The  man  of  genius, 
if  he  be  a  story-teller  or  poet,  naturally 
puts  the  characteristics  of  his  fellows  into  his 
books ;  and  his  fellows  as  naturally  fail  to  be 
flattered  by  portraits  not  wholly  painted  in  rose- 
tints.  Local  and  family  prejudices  are  the  pas 
sions  of  human  nature  first  to  be  roused  and  last 
to  be  quelled — whether  Puritan  in  Massachusetts 
or  Creole  in  Louisiana ;  and  so  Hawthorne  had 
very  definitely  found  when  he  pleasurably  deserted 
his  ancestral  streets  to  tread  less  sensitive  soil. 
Now,  however,  these  difficulties  are  already 
ancient ;  Salem  is  proud  of  the  birth  of  the 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  363 

greatest  of  our  romancers  ;  and  in  its  graciously 
conservative  shades  are  shown  many  of  his  homes 
and  haunts,  around  which  not  a  few  myths  have 
already  gathered.  The  beautiful  old  city  has  the 
very  atmosphere,  to-day,  which  was  the  vital 
breath  of  Hawthorne's  books;  and  though  it 
shows  that  unsymmetrical  combination  of  raw 
green-and-white  and  weather-beaten  age  which  are 
so  sharply  contrasted  in  the  highly  American  but 
characteristically  provincial  regions  of  eastern 
Massachusetts,  the  prevalent  impression  is  that  of 
colonial  venerableness.  Wooden  buildings  in  a 
salty  air  grow  old  quickly,  hence  Salem,  like 
Nantucket  or  lower  Newport,  already  seems  as 
restful  as  some  European  towns  of  a  fourfold 
age.  As  one  stands  before  the  birthplace  of 
Hawthorne  he  seems  to  see  the  characteristic 
New  England  boy,  whose  father  followed  the  sea 
from  out  the  harbor  of  a  rich  commercial  town  ; 
whose  mother's  ancestral  line  was  Massachusetts- 
Saxon  ;  and  whose  own  strong  frame  and  brain 
were  nourished  by  the  skies  and  woods,  fruits  and 
streams,  traditions  and  books  of  that  strip  of 
coast-land  between  the  Penobscot  and  the  Hud 
son,  where,  for  two  centuries  and  a  half,  average 
comfort  and  average  intelligence  have  been 
greater  than  in  any  other  spot  on  the  globe. 

Upon  this  seaside  strip  all  Hawthorne's  Amer 
ican  life  was  spent,  save  a  little  period  of  rather 
homesick  residence  at  Lenox,  among  the  At  Bowdoin 
Berkshire  hills  of  western  Massachusetts.  College. 
In  his  college  days  at  Bowdoin,  the  Brunswick 


364  American  Literature. 

air  was  fragrant  with  the  pine-needles  and  the 
neighboring  sea -coves  of  "  hundred  harbored 
Maine."  That  famous  institution  of  learning,  in 
its  early  days,  was  but  poorly  equipped  with 
books,  halls,  and  museums,  but  it  had  teachers 
who  taught  and  students  who  studied — the  things 
most  needed  in  hedge-school  or  university.  The 
gracious  culture  of  some  homes  in  the  older  towns 
of  the  new  state,  and  of  its  mother  Massachusetts, 
was  at  least  represented  in  the  class-lists ;  and 
Hawthorne,  while  ''wasting  time"  in  the  fashion 
so  common  among  under-graduates  of  bookish  or 
scribbling  tastes,  wras  acquiring — absorbing — a  lit 
erary  style  and  its  informing  spirit — which  very 
likely  would  have  come  to  him  anywhere,  but  cer 
tainly  distinguished  his  college  days. 

In  his  old  age  that  beloved  instructor  at  Bow- 
doin,  Professor  Alpheus  S.  Packard,  whose  career 
was  almost  synchronous  with  that  of  the  insti 
tution  to  whose  loyal  service  his  lifetime  was 
devoted,  wrote  at  my  request  his  recollections  of 
the  eminent  men  who  had  sat  before  him  in  the 
class-rooms.  The  clearly  written  manuscript  lies 
before  me  ;  and  from  it  I  transfer  his  vivid  though 
brief  reminiscences  of  the  greatest  of  that  remark 
able  group  of  celebrities  whose  undergraduate 
days  were  spent  at  Brunswick  in  the  decade 
between  1820  and  1830: 

"The  College  Triennial  not  unfrequently  fails 
to  denote,  in  its  classical  fashion,  real  celebrities 
of  a  class,  because  their  names  have  not  had 
appended  what  some  may  regard  as  the  cabala 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  365 

of  academic  bodies,  the  '  semilunar  fardels '  as  the 
eminent  Dr.  Cox  wittily  styled  them,  or  other 
mystic  initials  indicating  honors,  the  reward  of 
eminence,  or  compliments,  sometimes  forsooth 
bought  at  a  price.  Our  own  class  of  1825  has  in 
its  roll  the  name  of  '  Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  Mr.,' 
all  the  catalogue  shows  of  a  name  that  does  its 
full  share  to  make  that  class  memorable  in  college 
annals. 

4<  The  visitor  at  Salem,  Mass.,  is  shown  with 
pride  the  dwelling  in  the  lower  part  of  the  town 
where  Hawthorne  first  saw  the  light.  His  family 
came  from  England  and  settled  in  Salem  early 
in  the  last  century.  The  men  followed  the  sea  ; 
and  his  father,  a  ship-master,  died  of  yellow  fever 
in  Cuba  when  the  son  was  but  a  child.  His 
mother  was  said  to  be  of  great  beauty  and 
extreme  sensibility.  At  the  age  of  ten  the  boy, 
on  account  of  his  health,  was  sent  to  live  on  a 
farm  on  the  borders  of  Lake  Sebago,  Maine,  and 
at  the  proper  age  was  sent  back  to  Salem  to  com 
plete  his  fitting  for  college.  The  writer's  mem 
ory  pictures  him  distinctly  as  he  sat  in  the  Latin 
and  Greek  recitation  room,  a  dark-browed  youth, 
with  black,  drooping,  full,  inquisitive  eyes  ;  a  full 
head  of  dark  hair  ;  a  gentle,  grave,  low,  yet  musi 
cal  voice  ; — shy  as  a  maiden  ;  always  rendering  his 
passages  tastefully;  writing  his  Latin  exercise  with 
facility,  and  idiomatically.  His  English  themes 
were  complimented  by  the  professor  in  charge, 
Prof.  Newman,  whose  compliments  were  worth 
having.  He  was  more  a  reader  than  a  scholar  on 


366  American  Literature. 

the  merit  roll.  I  cannot  do  better  than  to  quote 
the  picture  of  him  by  the  pen  of  a  classmate,  J.  S. 
C.  Abbott,  recognized,  it  is  likely,  by  his  contem 
poraries  :  *  Though  singularly  retiring  in  his  hab 
its,  dwelling  in  unrevealed  recesses  which  his 
most  intimate  friends  were  never  permitted  to 
penetrate,  his  winning  countenance  and  gen 
tle  manners  won  esteem  and  even  popularity. 
Though  fond  of  being  present  at  festal  scenes,  he 
never  told  a  story  or  sang  a  song.  His  voice  was 
never  heard  in  any  shout  of  merriment ;  but  the 
silent,  beaming  smile  would  testify  to  his  keen 
appreciation  of  the  scene  and  to  his  enjoyment  of 
the  wit.  He  would  sit  for  a  whole  evening  with 
head  gently  inclined  to  one  side,  hearing  every 
word,  seeing  every  gesture,  and  yet  scarcely  a 
word  would  pass  his  lips.  But  there  was  an 
indescribable  something  in  the  silent  presence  of 
Hawthorne  which  rendered  him  one  of  the  most 
desired  guests  on  such  occasions.  Jonathan  Cil- 
ley  was  probably  his  most  intimate  friend  in  the 
class.  And  yet  his  discrimination  would  lead  him 
to  say  :  "  I  love  Hawthorne,  I  admire  him  ;  but  I 
do  not  know  him.  He  lives  in  a  mysterious 
world  of  thought  and  imagination  which  he  never 
permits  me  to  enter."  It  was  of  Hawthorne's 
college  days  I  was  to  write.  His  manner  of  life, 
and  the  sources  and  elements  of  his  fame,  are  the 
common  possession  of  the  world  of  letters." 

After  graduation  came  that  period  of  seclusion 
— rather  of  reclusion,  if  I  may  coin  a  word — in 
the  maternal  house  at  Salem.  Seldom,  in  the 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  367 

haste  and  waste  of  vigorous  American  life,  has  a 
great  author  entered  the  monastery  of  Hawthorne 
home,  there  to  spend  the  years  of  strong  as  recluse- 
young  manhood  in  a  novitiate  preparatory  to  the 
sacred  profession  of  letters.  Notwithstanding  the 
myth  and  legend  that  have  grown  up  around 
this  preparation-time — tales  half  true,  half  imag 
inary,  of  midnight  walks  and  daily  avoidance  of 
the  sunlight,  of  an  invisible  eccentric,  whose  face 
was  hardly  known  to  his  sisters  or  his  melancholy 
mother — the  common-sense  of  Hawthorne,  in  the 
matter,  was  as  actual  as  was  his  romance  of  life. 
He  always  shunned  much  that  the  world  called 
existence,  but  never  with  utterly  unwholesome 
idea  or  lastingly  hurtful  result.  In  this  determi 
nation  to  read,  think,  and  write  for  himself,  in  his 
own  way,  was  a  large  and  true  sanity,  fortunate 
for  the  world  of  letters.  In  vigorous  health,  of  a 
strong  and  manly  frame,  he  was  pursuing,  half- 
unconsciously,  that  graduate-study  which  some 
undertake  in  the  professional  school,  others  in  the 
university.  Years  later,  in  "  The  Marble  Faun," 
he  wrote  :  "  If  I  had  an  insupportable  burden, — if, 
for  any  cause,  I  were  bent  upon  sacrificing  every 
earthly  hope  as  a  peace-offering  toward  heaven,— 
I  would  make  the  wide  world  my  cell,  and  good 
deeds  to  mankind  my  prayer."  Of  the  weak  and 
bilious  selfishness  which,  under  the  pretence  of 
spiritual  strength  and  special  sanctity,  or  of  high 
intellectuality  and  contempt  for  the  ignobile  vulgiis, 
flies  from  the  humanity  so  needful  of  help,  Haw 
thorne  was  as  ignorant  in  his  hermit-cave  at 


368  American  Literature. 

Salem  as  he  was  later  in  his  capacity  of  editor, 
custom-house  officer,  or  consul.  His  subsequent 
work,  and  its  deserved  and  unwavering  fame,  were 
based  upon  a  self-control,  a  willingness  to  wait, 
by  no  means  easily  secured  or  maintained  in  a 
country  where  everything  was  to  be  done,  and  in 
a  young  literature  to  which  the  temptations  of 
sensationalism  and  sentimentalism,  though  not  of 
financial  reward,  were  visible  on  every  hand. 
Hawthorne,  in  the  words  of  a  sage  critic,  had 
"  the  conscientious  fidelity  of  Puritanism  in  his 
veins,  a  thing  equally  important  for  literature  and 
for  life."*  The  conscientiousness  was  the  cause 
of  his  smaller,  more  delicate,  or  realistic  successes  ; 
the  fidelity  of  his  broader  triumphs.  Whittier 
once  told  the  same  critic  that  "when  he  himself 
had  obtained,  with  some  difficulty,  in  1847,  the 
insertion  of  one  of  Hawthorne's  sketches  in  The 
National  Era,  the  latter  said  quietly,  '  There  is 
not  much  market  for  my  wares.' "f  Thus 
patiently,  in  unruffled  temper  and  quiet  determi 
nation  to  do  his  best,  Hawthorne  worked  on — 
writing,  pruning,  destroying.  What  the  world  lost 
by  his  burning  of  manuscripts  we  shall  never 
know ;  they  must  have  been  better  than  most 
writers'  best,  but  our  American  master  of  com 
position  may  surely  be  left,  if  any  one  may, 
with  a  reputation  for  wisdom  in  the  case  of  his 
own  genius  and  the  development  of  its  printed 
expression.  His  "protecting  laziness,"  as  Julian 

*  T.  W.  Higginson,  "  Short  Studies  of  American  Authors,"  6. 
t  "  Short  Studies,"  10. 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  369 

Hawthorne  calls  it,  saved  him  from  crudity  or 
imperfection  in  literary  result ;  but  in  itself  it  must 
have  been  also  a  discretion  that  looked  toward 
a  high  achievement  or  none.*  We  must  take 
results  as  they  are  ;  some  books  are  worth  waiting 
for ;  better  a  decade  of  toil  on  a  single  good  book 
than  ten  weak  volumes  in  a  year.  Hawthorne's 
end  crowned  the  work,  and  amply  atoned  for  what 
ever  actual  indolence  or  selfishness  he  may  have 
felt  or  shown. 

At  the  head  of  Hawthorne's  list  of  books,  in 
point  of  time,  stands  "Fanshawe"  (1828),  long 
obscure  because  unreprinted,  and  still,  in  its  first 
edition,  a  will-o'-the-wisp  dancing  before  "  collec 
tors."  When  reissued  in  1876,  "  Fan-  « Fanshawe," 
shawe "  was  discovered  to  be  a  quiet 
pleasant,  old-fashioned  little  romance  of  an  ideal 
ized  Bowdoin,  well  enough  in  its  way,  but  deserv 
ing  neither  praise  nor  blame.  It  is  easy  and 
agreeable  reading,  marked  by  a  grace  of  style  not 
usual  among  young  men,  and  marred  by  a  vague 
ness  of  characterization  which  Hawthorne  after 
ward  outgrew  for  the  most  part,  though  not 
entirely.  His  ideal  touch  here  depicted  men  and 
women  who  seemed  to  live  just  above  our  world, 
or  beyond  it,  not  on  it.  Later,  without  loss  of 


*  "  Was  there  ever  such  a  weary  delay  in  obtaining  the  slightest  recog 
nition  from  the  public  as  in  my  case  ?  I  sat  down  by  the  wayside  of  life, 
like  a  man  under  enchantment,  and  a  shrubbery  sprung  up  around  me  and 
the  bushes  grew  to  be  saplings,  and  the  saplings  became  trees,  until  no 
exit  appeared  possible  through  the  entangling  depths  of  my  obscurity." — 
Prefatory  note  (to  his  friend  Horatio  Bridge)  to  «•  The  Snow  Image,  and 
other  Twice-Told  Tales." 
24 


370  American  Literature. 

grace  and  with  gain  of  art,  the  romantic  and  the 
real  became  one  in  his  stories. 

Nine  years  intervened  between  "  Fanshawe  "  and 

the  first  volume  of  "  Twice-Told  Tales,"  the  book 

that  marks  the  true  advent  of  its  author 

"Twice-Told     .  . 

Tales,"  1837-  m  American  letters.  It  displays  in  an 
entirety  the  idea,  the  method,  and  the 
form  of  utterance  which  were  to  be  inseparably 
connected,  in  literary  history,  with  the  name  of 
the  writer,  and  which  have  been  stated  at  length 
in  the  introductory  pages  of  this  chapter.  The 
idea  was  to  portray  life  in  its  actuality,  as  viewed 
by  the  romancer,  that  is  to  say,  the  prose-poet. 
The  method  was  to  select  characteristic  stories, 
half  true  and  half  imaginative,  from  the  past 
times  of  colonial  New  England,  a  field  unknown 
in  fiction,  but  offering  deeper  themes  than  those 
Irving  had  found  in  New  Amsterdam  or  Tarry- 
town,  by  the  slow-sweeping  Hudson.  The  form 
of  utterance  was  a  pellucid  English  displaying  the 
poetic  sense,  and  the  slily  humorous  as  well,  but 
unmarked  by  the  roundabout  facetiousness  of  the 
writers  who  had  gone  just  before.  Hawthorne 
was  intelligible  to  every  one  who  could  read  at 
all,  and  he  was  found  enjoyable  by  those  who  like 
to  dwell  upon  the  details  of  a  brook,  a  landscape, 
a  picture,  a  poem,  or  a  beautiful  woman.  Haw 
thorne  was  always  fully  aware  of  the  artistic 
importance  of  a  title,  and  here,  in  the  names  of 
the  tales  and  the  collection  as  a  whole,  he  began 
to  show  that  felicity  of  nomenclature  which  did 
not  desert  him  in  his  subsequent  undertakings. 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  371 

He  had  at  length  made  an  auspicious  beginning 
of  an  unruffled  career. 

The  "childly  heart"  of  Hawthorne,  the  beat 
ings  of  which  were  never  stilled  until  the  end  of 
his  earthly  life,  turned  him  in  his  earlier  years  to 
the  writing  of  children's  books, — now  of  New 
England  history,  as  in  "  Grandfather's  Chair"; 

nOW     of     Such      representa-     Juvenile    Stories:    "The   Whole 

r  i_          i  History  of  Grandfather's  Chair," 

tlVeS  OI    manhOOd  Or  WOm-     1841;  "A  Wonder-Book  for  Girls 

anhood  as  Cromwell,  Dr. 
Johnson,  Sir  Isaac  New- 
ton,  Franklin,  West  the  Wonder-Book,"  1853. 
painter,  or  Queen  Christina  of  Sweden,  whose 
sketch  portraits  made  up  a  little  book  of  "True 
Stories  from  History  and  Biography."  "A  Won 
der-Book  and  "  Tanglewood  Tales,"  one  work 
under  two  names,  retell  a  round  dozen  of  stories 
from  classical  mythology.  These  four  volumes, 
as  the  collected  and  final  presentation  of  Haw 
thorne's  juvenile-writing  for  fifteen  or  twenty 
years,  are  now  properly  included  in  all  collected 
editions  of  his  works.  Children's  story-books  at 
their  best  are  literature  of  the  ideal  in  a  true 
sense  ;  the  child  is  an  instinctive  poet,  and  often 
spurns  all  but  the  best  that  imagination  can  offer. 
That  so  few  books  for  children  are  literary  clas 
sics  is  the  fault  of  writers,  not  of  theme  or  audi 
ence.  Said  Hawthorne,  in  his  prefatory  note  to 
the  "  True  Stories  from  History  and  Biography"  : 
"  This  small  volume  and  others  of  a  similar  char 
acter,  from  the  same  hand,  have  not  been  com 
posed  without  a  deep  sense  of  responsibility. 


372  American  Literature. 

The  author  regards  children  as  sacred,  and  would 
not,  for  the  world,  cast  anything  into  the  fountain 
of  a  young  heart  that  might  embitter  and  pollute 
its  waters.  And,  even  in  point  of  the  reputation 
to  be  aimed  at,  juvenile  literature  is  as  well  worth 
cultivating  as  any  other.  The  writer,  if  he  suc 
ceed  in  pleasing  his  little  readers,  may  hope  to  be 
remembered  by  them  till-  their  own  old  age, — a 
far  longer  period  of  literary  existence  than  is  gen 
erally  attained  by  those  who  seek  immortality 
from  the  judgments  of  full-grown  men."  The 
conscientious  workmanship  which  Hawthorne  thus 
gave  to  the  myth-stories,  and  to  the  retelling  of 
the  tales  of  the  Lady  Arbella  Johnson,  Endicott 
and  the  Red  Cross  (to  that  sturdy  governor  he 
recurred  again  and  again),  Eliot  and  his  Indian 
Bible,  Phips'  treasure,  the  Pine-Tree  Shillings, 
the  Liberty  Tree,  the  exiles  from  Acadia,  the 
Hutchinson  mob,  and  the  Boston  Massacre, 
resulted  in  a  patient  and  sympathetic  art  unsur 
passed  in  his  other  writings,  with  which  they  are 
in  general  agreement  as  to  plan,  detail,  and  ver 
bal  style.  For  a  parallel  to  this  fact,  which  is 
demonstrable  in  an  hour's  reading,  one  must  go 
to  the  works  of  Walter  Scott. 

In  these  lesser  writings  there  is  a  charm  that 
also  appears  in  the  minor  tales  and  sketches  in 
Quiet  general,  produced  at  various  periods  of 
charm.  Hawthorne's  career,  such  as  "  Fragments 
from  the  Journal  of  a  Solitary  Man "  ;  "Graves 
and  Goblins "  (one  of  his  most  characteristic 
sketches,  and  a  masterpiece  of  English) ;  the 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  373 

brief  biographies  of  Mrs.  Hutchinson,  Phips,  Pep- 
perell,  Thomas  Green  Fessenden  the  satirical 
poet,  and  Hawthorne's  college  friend  Jonathan 
Cilley ;  or  even  such  an  unspontaneous  bit  of 
kindly  hackwork  as  the  introduction  to  poor 
Delia  Bacon's  portentous  "  Philosophy  of  Shake 
speare's  Plays  Unfolded."  Hawthorne's  style 
sometimes  mystified  the  stupid,  as  in  "  The  Mar 
ble  Faun,"  or  the  delightful  sketch  of  his  dying 
years,  "Chiefly  about  War  Matters"  (1862);  but 
the  style  and  tone  were  unmistakable,  in  their 
quiet  and  agreeable  gentleness,  which  would  have 
been  a  mannerism  or  thin  affectation,  had  it  just 
missed  success,  but  which,  in  Hawthorne's  strong 
hand,  was  a  constant  refreshment,  as  of  a  cool 
and  leisurely  brook  in  the  shade. 

To  this  quiet  strength  is  due  the  constant  and 
characteristic  effect  produced  by  the  style  of  such 
stones  as  "  The  Gray  Champion,"  "  The  Minis 
ter's  Black  Veil,"  "  Dr.  Heidegger's  Experiment," 
the  four  "  Legends  of  the  Province  House," 
"  Peter  Goldthwaite's  Treasure,"  "  Endicott  and 
the  Red  Cross,"  or  "  Edward  Fane's  Rosebud,"  in 
"  Twice-Told  Tales."  There  is  no  radical  differ 
ence  between  the  two  volumes  of  this  work  and  its 
third  or  supplementary  series  ; 

»  .,         ,  i  •  .1  "  The  Snow-Image,  and 

while  the  tales  composing  trie  Other  Twice-Toid  Tales," 
two  volumes  of  -Mosses  from  ^*'>  OWM^^ 
an  Old  Manse"  are  in  all  essen 
tials  similar.  Nor  is  there  any  significance  or 
importance  in  the  title  by  which  "  The  Great 
Stone  Face,"  "  The  Canterbury  Pilgrims,"  "  The 


374  American  Literature. 

Man  of  Adamant,"  "  The  Devil  in  Manuscript," 
and  "  The  Wives  of  the  Dead "  are  bound 
together ;  nor,  in  the  latest  collection,  is  there  any 
but  a  general  relation  between  "  The  Birthmark," 
"The  Hall  of  Fantasy,"  "The  Celestial  Rail 
road,"  "The  Procession  of  Life,"  "The  New 
Adam  and  Eve,"  "  Egotism  ;  or  the  Bosom 
Serpent,"  "  Roger  Malvin's  Burial ; "  or  "  Earth's 
Holocaust."  These  strong  stories  were  written 
deliberately  during  many  years  ;  printed,  in  part, 
in  divers  periodicals ;  and  at  last  conveniently 
collected.  There  is  some  difference,  of  course, 
between  their  average  character  and  that  of  "  The 
Gentle  Boy "  (in  which  Hawthorne  dangerously 
approached  sentimentalism),  or  that  of  his 
sketches  of  peculiar  humor  and  observation,  such 
as  "  A  Rill  from  the  Town  Pump,"  "  Sights  from 
a  Steeple,"  "  Main  Street,"  "  Buds  and  Bird 
Voices,"  or  "  The  Intelligence  Office."  But  the 
difference  is  neither  striking  nor  constant.  Haw 
thorne,  with  rare  lapses,  was  the  patient  and 
masterful  observer  and  chronicler,  unflushed  by 
contagious  excitement,  but  deeply  sympathetic. 
The  intensely  human  personages  of  fiction  seized 
him  as  they  did  Dickens  and  George  Eliot ;  but 
with  slow  might  they  were  turned  by  his  arm 
before  the  public  eye  and  fixed  there  in  the 
perpetuity  of  literary  presentation.  His  self- 
control  was  almost  absolute,  but  his  perception 
and  human  feeling  were  not  less  deep  and  broad. 
The  manner  sometimes  almost  mastered  him  ;  but 
not  often,  in  an  age  of  mannerisms,  did  he  fail  to 


I 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  375 

create  a  prose-product  of  his  own,  in  idea  and 
word.  He  saw,  and  made,  in  the  fullest  sense  ; 
hence  his  place  is  with  the  writers  of  the  highest 
rank.  As  an  ideal  realist  he  stands  at  the  head  of 
his  class,  with  no  other  name  as  a  rival  in  the 
same  field, — neither  French  nor  English  in  his 
form  and  manner.  Like  Goethe  he  connected 
nineteenth-century  habits  of  accurate  observation 
with  the  ideality  of  all  centuries ;  but  like 
Emerson  he  perceived  the  spiritual  meaning  of 
life.  Moralist  of  moralists,  his  approach  was 
artistically  indirect ;  in  cordial  sympathy  with 
romance,  he  was  far  removed  from  the  excitable 
and  hortatory  romanticism  of  Hugo  ;  a  novelist  of 
the  heart,  he  found  Wertherism  nearly  incompre 
hensible.  His  pictures  of  the  moral  sentiment 
were  of  the  greatest  because  none  had  more  com 
pletely  been  able  to  say,  "  I  am  a  man." 

Hawthorne's  large  view,  combined  as  it  always 
was  with  an  essentially  just  measurement  of  his 
powers,  enabled  him  to  pass  without  uncertain 
touch  from  the  twenty-page  stories  of  his  early 
life  to  the  romances  of  his  last  fifteen  years. 
This  change,  however,  would  have  had  in  it  some 
what  of  an  experimental  character  if  either  "  The 
House  of  the  Seven  Gables"  or  "  The  Blithedale 
Romance "  had  preceded  "  The  Scarlet  Letter." 
That  book  was  the  first  of  Hawthorne's  « The  scarlet 
romances  in  point  of  time,  and  on  the  Letter>"  l8S°- 
whole  it  remains  his  best  in  absolute  merit.  It 
delineates  the  blight  of  a  great  sin  upon  a  weak 
man,  a  strong  woman,  a  fiend,  whose  cold  blood 


376  American  Literature. 

oozed  from  a  heart  of  ice,  a  pure  little  child,  and 
the  community  in  which  they  lived.  That  commu 
nity  was  old-Puritan  ;  the  weakling  was  a  minister 
of  the  Gospel,  and  his  paramour  was  the  wedded 
wife  of  the  avenger  of  a  home  into  which  affection 
came  only  as  the  destroyer.  The  soul-struggles 
of  four  human  beings,  against  the  background 
of  stern  righteousness  and  witch-superstition,  are 
painted  in  hues  of  purple  and  black,  with  rays  of 
nature's  sunshine  and  childish  innocence  stealing 
across.  In  "  The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables" 
there  are  also  but  few  characters  ;  the 

"  The  House 

of  the  Seven       general  scene  and  atmosphere  are  the 

Gables,"  1851.  .     .  1.1  •  r 

same  ;  and  the  problematic  nature  01 
the  psychological  studies  is  as  evident  as  before. 
But  for  Hester  Prynne,  in  her  nobility  of  helpful 
self-atonement  for  sinning,  Arthur  Dimmesdale, 
ethereal  little  Pearl,  and  inexorable  Chilling- 
worth,  we  have  here  less  sombre  personages,  and 
a  thread  of  narrative  not  so  pitilessly  black.  He 
who  had  purely  written  a  tale  of  adultery  now 
turned  his  nice  sense  of  observation  and  power  of 
artistic  delineation  to  a  cheerier  theme.  This  is 
the  most  agreeable  of  his  longer  books,  and  the 
gentlest  and  sunniest  in  its  local  color.  The 
creator  of  soulful  Hester  Prynne,  pure,  maidenly 
Hilda,  mysterious  Miriam,  and  problematic 
Zenobia,  here  added  to  his  gallery  of  pictures  of 
true  women  Hepzibah  Pyncheon,  whose  essential 
excellence  consecrates  her  ancient  eccentricity ; 
and  Phoebe,  a  wood-flower  of  New  England  girl- 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  377 

hood.  "  The  Scarlet  Letter  "  is  a  romance  of  sin; 
"  The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables"  of  heredity  ;" 
"The  Blithedale  Romance"  of  the  forceful  might 
of  a  woman's  character,  in  struggle  with  «The 
strong  environment  and  stronger  self.  Romance1" 
Somewhat  after  the  fashion  of  Shake-  l852- 

speare's  "  Troilus  and  Cressida,"  it  burns  with 
passion,  the  while  the  author  stands  aloof  in  a 
reserve  only  not  cynical. 

In  "  The  Marble  Faun "  the  development  of 
character,  before  and  after  crime,  under  varying 
conditions  and  in  the  face  of  steadily  increasing 
temptations,  forms  the  central  theme.  The  title 
"  Transformation,"  by  which  the  Eng-  «  The  Marble 
lish  public  know  the  work,  explains  this  Faun»"  1860. 
root-idea  of  the  book ;  though  it  was  hardly  worth 
while  to  change  a  poetic  title  into  a  commonplace 
one,  for  the  sake  of  supposed  clearness.  The 
romance  is  longer  and  more  varied  than  "  The 
Scarlet  Letter."  But  in  both  books  the  char 
acters,  their  environment,  and  the  time  in  which 
they  live  are  well  presented  in  an  artistic  whole, 
so  that  the  progress  of  the  story  and  the  study  is 
in  neither  interrupted  by  irrelevant  or  injurious 
details. 

As  one  notes  the  large  purpose  of  "  The 
Marble  Faun,"  he  is  reminded  of  a  few  lines  of 
Emerson,  who  had  the  art,  when  he  wished,  of 
stating  things  so  neatly  that  he  would  have 
pleased  the  most  critical  Gallic  lover  of  mots.  A 
lasting  truth  is  here  applied  to  literary  criticism  : 


378  American  Literature. 

"'A  new  commandment/  said  the  smiling  muse, 
*  I  give  my  darling  son  :  Thou  shalt  not  preach/ 
Luther,  Fox,  Behmen,  Swedenborg,  grew  pale, 
And,  on  the  instant,  rosier  clouds  upbore 
Hafiz  and  Shakespeare  with  their  shining  choirs." 

The  preacher  has  his  function  and  the  artist  has 
his  ;  woe  be  to  the  latter  if  he  sermonize  when  he 
ought  to  sing  or  paint.  Seldom  did  Hawthorne 
forget  the  law  which  Emerson  thus  phrased.  He 
chose  august  themes,  as  the  great  artists  so  often 
do ;  but  those  themes  he  elaborated  from  the 
artist's  point  of  view.  When  "  The  Marble 
Faun  "  was  published,  several  critics  went  so  far 
as  to  declare  that  its  author  simply  called  the 
reader's  attention  to  some  abstrusely  interesting 
problems  of  love,  sin,  and  woe,  and  then  dropped 
them  at  the  close  of  two  volumes,  without  reason 
or  explanation.  According  to  this  view,  the 
romancer  was  surely  no  volunteer  moralizer,  but 
was  keeping  too  closely  within  the  artist's  prov 
ince.  Even  from  the  artistic  standpoint  some 
disappointed  denunciations  were  thrown  at  the 
work,  on  the  strictly  artistic  ground  that  it  was 
left  incomplete  as  a  mere  creation.  As  time 
passed,  there  was  bestowed  upon  the  romance  an 
approval  denied  at  first  ;  and  the  underlying 
purpose  in  the  author's  mind  was  seen  to  be 
fulfilled  as  regards  both  the  soul  and  the  form  of 
this  "  Romance  of  Monte-Beni."  The  rosy  cloud 
of  which  Emerson  wrote  has  tinted  the  blacker 
skies  which  once  hung  over  this  latest  of  Haw 
thorne's  completed  fictions ;  and  with  its  glow  still 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  379 

above  us  we  shall  at  least  be  removed  from  the 
danger  of  treating  "  The  Marble  Faun"  as  any 
thing  else  than  a  work  of  genius,  written  with  the 
purpose  which  underlies  the  chief  products  of  the 
imagination.  "  It  is  one  of  those  works  of  art 
which  are  also  works  of  nature,  and  will  present 
to  each  thoughtful  reader  a  new  set  of  meanings, 
according  to  his  individuality,  insight,  or  expe 
rience.* 

"The  Marble  Faun,"  alone  among  Hawthorne's 
longer  works,  has  its  scene  in  Italy,  and  is  a 
direct  outgrowth  of  the  author's  foreign  residence, 
which  began  with  his  Liverpool  consulate  in  1853, 
under  President  Pierce.*  Its  local  color  is  so 
true,  and  its  local  allusions  are  so  many,  that  it 
has  been  used  by  some  as  a  sort  of  Italian  travel 
ler's  note-book,  or  guide-book  to  Rome.  Its 
theme  is  the  slow  development  of  utter  sin  in  the 
breast  of  a  man  at  first  so  pure  and  true  as  to 
seem  a  mere  conscienceless  and  spontaneous  child 
of  nature.  The  story  shows  how  innocence,  if 
merely  negative  and  lacking  the  positive  qualities 
of  developed  virtue,  readily  becomes  the  ally  of 
sin  and  the  doer  of  evil.  Then  follow  the  rise 
of  the  consciousness  of  guilt,  the  growth  of 
remorse,  and  the  perception  that  self-mastery,  in 
some  natures,  affords  a  nobler  happiness  than  can 

*  G.  P.  Lathrop,  "  A  Study  of  Hawthorne,"  255. 

*  In  1852  Hawthorne  had  written,  for  "  campaign"  circulation,  an  excel 
lent,  and  calmly  discriminating  biography  of  his  college  mate  and  life-long 
friend,  in  whose  company  at  last   he  died.     On   accession  to  office,   Pierce 
bestowed  upon  Hawthorne  a  financially  valuable  office,   and  Hawthorne, 
naturally,  was  charged  with  political  time-serving  in  his  small  friendly  task, 


380  American  Literature. 

ever  be  found  in  thoughtless  existence  and  enjoy 
ment.  A  witty  writer  once  ably  satirized  extreme 
Augustinianism  in  an  essay  entitled  "  Hell  as 
the  Foundation  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven."  In 
this  apparently  repulsive  and  absurd  idea  there  is 
an  underlying  truth :  that  while  man  possesses 
free-will,  his  struggle  for  mastery  may  lead  him  to 
a  nobler  height  of  joy  than  that  of  impeccable  and 
untempted  innocence.  But  the  converse  truth, 
that  complete  innocence  may  in  itself  raise  the 
soul  to  a  loveliness  that  has  but  to  be  continued 
in  the  heaven  of  the  hereafter,  is  portrayed  no 
less  forcibly  in  the  character  of  Hilda.  The  few 
personages  of  the  romance  typify  almost  a  world. 
In  Brother  Antonio  we  have  the  shadow,  now 
deepening,  now  lifting,  of  a  depravity  so  deep  as 
almost  to  seem  total ;  in  Miriam  the  blight  of  a 
sin  neither  accepted  utterly  nor  as  yet  atoned  for ; 
in  Donatello  the  spiritual  ascent  from  animal 
existence  toward  a  distant  but  ultimate  moral 
triumph;  in  Hilda  a  lovely  purity  sullied  only  by 
the  accidental  knowledge  of  guilt ;  in  Kenyon  a 
man  of  something  more  than  average  goodness, 
yet,  compared  with  Hilda, 

"  As  moonlight  unto  sunlight,  or  as  water  unto  wine." 

The  elaboration  of  the  romance  is  marked  by 
that  finish  which  comes  of  the  union  of  deliberate 

while  Pierce  was  blamed  for  favoritism.  But  it  has  always  been  the  wise 
policy  of  the  American  government  to  send  competent  literary  men  into  its 
diplomatic  service ;  while  Hawthorne  sufficiently  proved  his  disinterested 
ness  by  flatly  refusing,  in  1863,  to  withdraw  an  affectionate  dedication  to 
Pierce  (then  unpopular  in  the  North),  though  warned  by  a  discreet  pub 
lisher  that  the  book  might  be  ruined. 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  381 

art  in  conception  with  ample  leisure  for  execution. 
Florence  and  Rome  are  portrayed  in  a  series  of 
pictures   that   are  both    incidental    and  essential, 
and    therefore    seem    pleasurably    indispensable.^ -TV 
Hawthorne,  as   we  have  seen,  was  too  great  ^v. 
author  to  quarrel  with  his  environment. 

Genius,  art, 

He  most  naturally,  like  all  great  writers,       andenvi- 

•    i   •          i  ronment. 

worked  at  home ;  but  as  his  theme  was 
the  human  heart,  not  the  American  heart,  he 
studied  it  to  advantage  under  Saint  Peter's  dome, 
and  afterward  wrote  nearly  all  the  romance  on 
the  soil  of  England.  He  changed  his  skies,  not 
his  soul,  when  he  crossed  the  sea.  Having 
patiently  thought  out  his  plan,  he  elaborated  it, 
in  this  as  in  his  other  longer  stories,  without 
haste  and  without  rest.  He  was  so  sure  of  the 
poetry  of  the  idea  that  he  did  not  weary  of  the 
details  by  which  genius  was  made  to  take  the 
form  of  permanent  art. 

That  the  art  of  the  story  (in  its  original  form, 
and   without    the    final   chapter   added   by    Haw 
thorne  after  the  publication  of  the  work)  is  per 
manent,  and  not  a  mere  study  or  puzzle, 
is  now  perceived  by  nearly  all  readers,        bieFaun" 

r  -ill-  incomplete  ? 

as  it  was  at  first  perceived  by  the  wiser 
critics,  such  as  John  Lothrop  Motley.  To  marry 
or  to  hang  his  heroes  and  heroines  was  no  part  of 
the  romancer's  plan,  notwithstanding  the  numer 
ous  hostile  criticisms  at  first  evoked  by  the  book 
—criticisms  of  its  alleged  inconclusiveness  and 
hasty  ending.  In  the  familiarity  of  a  friendly 
conversation  Hawthorne  once  exclaimed:  "As 


382  American  Literature. 

regards  the  last  chapter  of  'Transformation'  in 
the  second  edition,  don't  read  it;  it's  good  for 
nothing.  The  story  isn't  meant  to  be  explained  ; 
it's  cloudland."  *  Having  detailed,  both  broadly 
and  minutely,  the  dawn,  progress,  and  effect  of 
sin  upon  several  souls,  differently  constituted  and 
differently  related  to  the  central  crime,  Haw 
thorne  leaves  to  the  reader  the  minute  following- 
out  of  future  penalty  and  expiation.  The  three 
parts  of  repentance,  in  the  Roman  Catholic 
scheme,  are  contrition,  confession,  and  satisfac 
tion.  Applying  this  nomenclature  to  the  case  in 
hand,  Hawthorne  deems  that  his  effect  is  made 
nobler  by  the  absence  of  any  detailed  arrange 
ment  of  the  "  satisfaction  "  division.  Mrs.  Haw 
thorne  once  wrote  to  a  sapient  critic  of  the 
smaller  order,  who  doubtless  thought  he  could 
have  arranged  the  story  much  better  himself : 
"  Mr.  Hawthorne  is  driven  by  his  muse,  but  does 
not  drive  her  ;  and  I  have  known  him  to  be  in  an 
inextricable  doubt,  in  the  midst  of  a  book  or 
sketch,  as  to  its  probable  issue,  waiting  upon  the 
muse  for  the  rounding  in  of  the  sphere  which 
every  true  work  of  art  is."f  In  this  particular 
work  of  art  the  author  felt  that  the  curtain  might 
drop  upon  the  play  before  the  playwright  at 
tempted  to  settle  everything ;  and  there  was 
evident  wisdom  in  this  course.  Great  problems 
have  been  studied,  and  the  reader  may  follow 
them  on  and  on,  if  he  can  and  will.  If  he  cannot, 

*  "  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  and  his  Wife,"  n.  236. 
t  "  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  and  his  Wife,"  n.  247. 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  383 

it  is  useless  to  discuss  the  case  with  him.  Some 
novelists  and  some  readers  apparently  think  that 
this  is  a  world  of  completions  rather  than  of 
beginnings  ;  and  that  the  idea  of  continuance  or 
aspiration  is  fatal  to  any  work  of  art.  But  art 
itself,  on  the  contrary,  would  be  false  to  life  if  it 
never  expressed  that  constant  notion  of  develop 
ment  and  present  incompleteness  which  lies  at  the 
very  foundation  of  things  ;  which  is  accepted  as 
cordially  by  true  science  as  by  true  religion  ;  and 
without  which  the  universe  would  seem  to  be  a 
vast  mistake. 

I  have  devoted,  perhaps,  a  disproportionate  part 
of  this  chapter  to  the  study  of  "  The  Marble  Faun," 
not  because  it  is  Hawthorne's  greatest  book,  but 
because  it  was  his  last,  and  suggests  in  a  pecul 
iar  way  certain  elements  in  his  final  art.  The 
literary  historian  has  no  right,  it  seems  to  me,  to 
discuss  "The  Dolliver  Romance"  and  its  four 
antecedent  studies,*  though  .,TheDolliver  Romance,, 
"  Septimius  Felton  "  and  "  Doc-  Atlantic  Monthly,  juiy, 

*_,    .  •  „  1864,  Jan.  1865;  also,  with 

tor     Gnmshawe  S     becret       Seem       another  fragment,  River- 

11  .  •,  side  Hawthorne,  xi.  7-67. 

virtually      complete     in     them 
selves.      Ideas    of    a   bloody    footprint,    of    a    life 
elixir,  and  of  inherited  tendency  were  slowly  shap 
ing   themselves    in    the  author's   mind.     He   was 

*  "  A  Look  into  Hawthorne's  Workshop,  being  notes  for  a  posthumous 
romance  by  Nathaniel  Hawthorne;  The  Century,  January,  1883.  "The 
Ancestral  Footstep  ";  outlines  of  an  English  romance  (edited  by  G.  P.  Lath- 
rop) ;  Riverside  edition  of  Hawthorne,  xi.  431-521.  "Doctor  Grimshawe's 
Secret,  a  Romance,"  edited,  with  preface  and  notes,  by  Julian  Hawthorne; 
Boston,  1883.  "  Septimus  Felton,  or,  The  Elixir  of  Life  "  (edited  by  Una 
Hawthorne) ;  Boston,  1872. 


384  American  Literature. 

elaborating  them  into  artistic  form  with  unusual 
care,  due  both  to  his  wish  to  write  a  masterpiece 
and  to  his  sense  of  failing  physical  strength.  "  The 
Dolliver  Romance"  must  stand  a  fragment,  like 
Thackeray's  "  Denis  Duval,"  or  Dickens'  "  Edwin 
Drood,"  and  criticism  of  a  fragment  is  superflu 
ous. 

"  The  wizard  hand  lies  cold, 
Which  at  its  topmost  speed  let  fall  the  pen, 
And  left  the  tale  half  told. 

Ah  !  who  shall  lift  that  wand  of  magic  power, 

And  the  lost  clew  regain  ? 
The  unfinished  window  in  Aladdin's  tower 

Unfinished  must  remain  !  " 

From  these  studies,  however,  we  learn  with 
what  reticent  care,  in  an  age  of  hurried  bookmak- 
ing,  especially  in  fiction,  did  Hawthorne  work. 
The  same  lesson  is  taught  by  his  voluminous  note 
books  of  his  art  and  life  in  America,  England, 
France,  and  Italy,  from  which  copious  extracts 
were  properly  published  after  his  death.  The 
«  Passages  from  the  American  English  diaries  were  the  pre- 
Note-Books,"  2  vois  1868 ;  cursor  and  the  treasury  of 

from  the  English,  2  vols.,  1870;  J 

from  the  French  and  Italian,    the  keen  sketches  afterward 

2  vols.,  1872.  .  . 

printed  in    finished    torm    as 

"  Our  Old  Home," — as  kindly  and  as  searching 
"Our  oid  as  Emerson's  "  English  Traits,"  though 
Home,"  1863.  externally  less  pretentious.  The  Amer 
ican  note-books,  however,  are  most  valuable  of  all, 
with  their  hints  for  a  hundred  stories  that  Haw 
thorne  never  wrote  and  that  no  other  could  write. 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  385 

They  are,  in  their  entirety,  one  of  the  deepest, 
truest,  and  purest  personal  records  which  litera 
ture  can  show, — high  in  thought  and  remarkably 
finished  in  style.  It  should  also  be  said  that  they 
do  not  reveal  to  us  an  aimless  night-prowler, 
a  specialist  in  morbid  anatomy,  a  literary  alienist. 
They  are  the  daily  and  unstudied  memoranda  of 
a  mind  great  in  power  and  true  in  purpose. 

I  have  thus  considered  at  length,  and  with  such 
conscientiousness  as  I  could  command,  Hawthorne's 
the  literary  work  of  a  writer  who  seems  faults- 

to  me  both  relatively  and  absolutely  great.  In  this 
consideration  the  element  of  commendation  has 
been  paramount.  Among  his  faults  I  have  not 
been  able  to  include  morbidness  or  inartistic  in 
completeness.  That  he  had  faults,  however,  is 
unquestionable,  and  they  should  be  stated  defi 
nitely  and  frankly.  Pure  and  fine  in  mental 
nature,  he  was  sometimes  unexpectedly  coarse 
(I  mean  coarse,  not  indecent)  in  utterance. 
Descriptions,  or  at  times  entire  stories,  are 
aggravatingly  impassive  ;  he  stands  without  as  a 
spectator,  and  what  should  be  the  broadly  dra 
matic  view  falls  into  an  apparent  indifferentism 
which  we  cannot  reconcile  with  his  general  pur 
pose  and  attitude  in  literature.  The  unconscious 
strength  summoned  from  a  rich  personal  experi 
ence  is  missed  at  critical  points.  At  times,  as  in 
reading  the  works  of  the  Laodicean  realists  them 
selves,  we  are  ready  to  cry  out  against  the  frigid 
philosophy  of  curious  external  observation. 
25 


386  American  Literature. 

Again,  while  he  was  a  great  delineator  of  repre 
sentative  elements  in  the  characters  of  men, 
women,  and  children,  his  colors  were  sometimes 
too  pale  and  monotonous, — not  the  colors  of  flesh 
and  blood.  We  seldom  recognize  a  '*  Hawthorne 
character  "  on  the  streets  of  our  daily  walk.  We 
are  not  always  in  the  presence  of  vitality,  but  too 
often  in  that  of  personified  ideas.  His  style  is 
unvaried ;  half-a-dozen  short  stories,  or  three 
romances,  read  in  succession,  may  for  some  readers 
emphasize  this  fact  to  the  extent  of  weariness. 
The  master  seems  a  mannerist  ;  self-control  ap 
pears  the  dead  level  of  a  great  mountain  table 
land,  as  dull  as  the  valley-plains  below. 

But,  after  all,  these  faults  are  incidental,  not 
inherent.  Hawthorne  was  a  great  imaginative 
artist,  with  a  highly  ideal  purpose  and  a  strong 
and  sure  hand  ;  therefore  his  fame,  small  at  first, 
has  steadily  increased  in  the  quarter  of  a  century 
since  his  death,  and  shows  no  sign  of  waning  as 
the  years  go  on.  He  once  wrote:  "  No 

Hawthorne's  J     . 

place  in  man  who  needs  a  monument  ever  ought 
to  have  one."  Hawthorne's  monument 
is  not  beside  the  modest  grave  above  which  whis 
per  the  pines  of  Concord's  Sleepy  Hollow ;  nor  is 
it  in  the  commendations  or  analyses  of  his  many 
critics.  His  monument  is  in  his  books,  which  so 
combine  genius  and  art,  imagination  and  human 
nature.  Those  whose  eyes  may  see  the  fulness 
of  human  existence — its  bright  gayety  and  its 
gloomy  grief  and  sin — perceive  in  Hawthorne's 
books  the  breadth  of  that  mysterious  thing  in 


/      Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  387 

which  we  are,  and  which  we  call  life.  In  "  The 
Marble  Faun"  we  are  told  that  "  a  picture,  how 
ever  admirable  the  painter's  art  and  wonderful 
his  power,  requires  of  the  spectator  a  surrender 
of  himself,  in  due  proportion  with  the  miracle 
which  has  been  wrought.  Like  all  revelations  of 
the  better  life,  the  adequate  perception  of  a  great 
work  of  art  demands  a  gifted  simplicity  of  vision." 
Hawthorne's  students,  indeed,  need  not  claim  that 
they  must  possess  high  gifts  of  mind  in  order  to 
perceive  the  art  of  his  books  ;  for  he  but  requires 
in  his  readers  somewhat  of  his  own  simplicity  and 
naturalness.  They  must  follow  him  as  a  master, 
for  the  time  being,  and  learn  in  his  school.  He 
whose  knowledge  of  human  nature  goes  beyond 
shallow  optimism  on  the  one  hand,  and  worldly 
cynicism  on  the  other,  need  find  no  riddles  in 
Hawthorne's  pages.  Perverse  or  dull  was  that 
French  critic  who  once  described  Hawthorne  as 
"  un  romancier  pessimiste."  It  would  be  difficult 
to  frame  a  statement  less  accurate,  or  one  more 
likely  to  amuse  the  romancer  himself,  if  this  title 
has  come  to  his  knowledge  in  the  land  of  shades. 

I  have  said  that  Hawthorne's  readers  may  follow 
him  as  a  master,  and  learn  in  his  school.  The 
same  advice  is  hardly  to  be  given  to  those  who 
not  only  read  but  write,  and  who  would  catch  the 
secret  of  his  literary  success  and  apply  it  to  their 
own  novels  or  romances.  Writers  as  well  as 
readers,  to  be  sure,  may  follow  Hawthorne  in  his 
habit  of  minutely-faithful  and  ever-delicate  obser 
vation  of  things  great  and  small;  they  may  dis- 


388  American  Literature. 

cover  that  a  realism  which  stoops  to  note  the 
color  of  a  single  petal  may  be  combined  with  a 
spiritualism  which  deems  a  heart-throb  more 
important  than  a  world  of  matter.  They  may 
study  his  pellucid  English,  simple  and  yet  artistic ; 
and  may  learn  not  to  overcrowd  their  pages  with 
too  numerous  figures  or  irrelevant  episodes.  He 
once  made  answer  to  a  query  as  to  his  style : 
"  It  is  the  result  of  a  great  deal  of  practice.  It  is 
a  desire  to  tell  the  simple  truth  as  honestly  and 
vividly  as  one  can."  This  seems  easy  enough  ; 
but  there  is  no  likelihood  that  there  will  be, 
in  America  or  elsewhere,  another  Hawthorne. 
From  his  name  has  been  derived  an  adjective,  but 
we  always  apply  the  word  "  Hawthornesque"  to  a 
single  effect  or  undeveloped  idea,  and  even  then 
some  restriction  is  usually  added  to  the  expression. 
His  field,  method,  and  style  were  in  a  large  sense 
his  own.  I  repeat  that  more  than  a  quarter  of  a 
century  must  have  elapsed  before  we  can  rank 
him  with  the  greatest  authors  of  the  world  ;  but  I 
add  with  equal  positiveness  that  he  made  for  him 
self  a  place  unoccupied  before  or  since.  There  is 
an  isolation  of  the  greatest  geniuses,  even  when 
they  have  followers  ;  but  when  no  followers 
appear,  or  succeed  in  their  attempts,  a  genius  is 
approved  by  his  very  loneliness.  The  Germans, 
with  affection  and  reverence  not  unmixed  with  a 
puzzled  awe,  apply  to  their  Richter  the  phrase 
"  the  only."  To  Hawthorne  the  same  expression 
belongs  in  a  higher  sense,  not  only  among  Ameri 
can  authors,  but  as  compared  with  writers  in  the 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  389 

broader  field.  At  first  unread,  then  underrated, 
then  called  morbid  or  at  best  cold  and  aloof, 
Hawthorne  now  stands  before  us  as  in  some  sense 
"  the  greatest  imaginative  writer  since  Shakes 
peare,"  of  whose  greatness  we  are  "  beginning  to 
arrive  at  some  faint  sense," — a  greatness  "immeas 
urably  vaster  than  that  of  any  other  American 
who  ever  wrote." 

In  this  greatness  the  spiritual  element  was  of 
constant  importance.  Hawthorne,  all  in  all,  was 
no  cold  observer  and  impassive  chronicler.  As 
author,  he  looked  into  the  heart  of  the  world,  and 
wrote.  As  man,  this  deathless  soul  could  say  in 
truth :  "  I  have  no  love  of  secrecy  and  darkness. 
I  am  glad  to  think  that  God  sees  through  my 
heart,  and,  if  any  angel  has  power  to  penetrate 
into  it,  he  is  welcome  to  know  everything  that  is 
there.  Yes,  and  so  may  any  mortal  who  is  capa 
ble  of  full  sympathy. 


CHAPTER  XL 

THE    LESSER    NOVELISTS. 

COINCIDENT  with  the  steadily  and  symmetri 
cally  developing  works  of  Hawthorne  appeared 
numerous  novels  by  numerous  hands,  some  of 
which  attained  a  circulation  remarkable  in  the 
annals  of  fiction,  but  nearly  all  of  which  are  now 
not  unkindly  forgotten.  Fifty  years  is  a  long 
period  in  the  fame  of  lesser  literature,  and  it 
seldom  leaves  the  renown  of  a  novel  in  any  glit 
tering  or  conspicuous  state.  With  the  arrival  of 
quiet  times  in  the  nation's  history — at  least  as  far 
as  foreign  wars  were  concerned — the  book-makers 
had  the  leisure  and  the  wish  to  furnish  an  abun 
dance  of  stories  to  the  readers  so  rapidly  multi 
plying.  With  the  spread  of  circulating  libraries 
there  came,  of  course,  a  corresponding  increase  of 
Minor  fiction  wou^"be  responses  to  the  all-prevalent 
before  the  human  demand:  "Tell  me  a  story." 

war  of  1861.       —., 

Ihen,  as  now,  the  United  States  had 
no  international  copyright  system,  and  then,  as 
now,  the  book  market  was  flooded  with  English 
fiction  in  paper  covers.  But  every  reading  folk 
demands  home-made  entertainment,  and  the  his 
tory  of  letters  shows  that  there  need  be  no  fear 
that  workers  will  fail  in  that  division  of  liter 
ary  composition  which  is  at  once  the  most  remu- 

390 


The  Lesser  Novelists.  391 

nerative  and  the  quickest  to  attract  individual 
notice  and  social  notoriety.  That  novels  may  be 
first  forgotten  is  equally  true,  but  oblivion  is  the 
common  fate  of  most  books  in  other  fields ; 
Edwards'  sermons  and  Willard's  "  Body  of  Divin 
ity"  are  as  undisturbed  to-day  as  Mrs.  Tenney's 
story,  and  even  more  quiescent  than  those  of 
Mrs.  Rowson. 

The  lesser  novelists  of  America,  in  the  second 
literary  period,  found  their  themes  in  American 
characters,  scenes,  and  historic  episodes  ;  in  imag 
inary  adventures  of  foreign  travel ;  in  ancient 
history,  and  in  sentiment  or  politics.  One  North 
erner  endeavored  to  crystallize  the  spirit  of  New 
England  thought  and  life  in  a  romance  at  once 
idyllic  and  religious ;  and  one  Southerner  painted 
for  the  nineteenth  century  certain  phases  of  the 
picturesque  life  of  the  old  regime  in  eighteenth- 
century  Virginia.  From  out  this  period  of  activ 
ity  in  lesser  fiction  there  also  stands  forth,  in  vivid 
isolation  that  may  diminish  but  cannot  wholly 
disappear,  the  potent  name  of  that  individual  and 
characteristic  story  which  was  one  of  the  causes  of 
Northern  triumph  in  the  war  that  freed  the  slave. 
On  the  whole,  however,  the  period  was  character 
ized  by  the  decline  of  the  Indian  romantic  novel ; 
the  rise  and  collapse  of  the  sweeter  or  more 
superficial  sentimentalism  in  prose  ;  and  the  com 
parative  failure  of  the  attempt  to  delineate  Amer 
ican  home  life  in  various  sections ;  for  it  cannot 
be  claimed  that  the  writers  before  the  war  pro 
duced  much  that  equalled  the  folk-pictures  or 


39 2  American  Literature. 

character  sketches  given  later  by  Miss  Jewett, 
Miss  Phelps,  Miss  Woolson,  Eggleston,  Bret 
Harte,  "  Charles  Egbert  Craddock,"  or  Cable. 

A  certain  special  significance,  among  all  the 
novels  of  this  period,  has  often  been  claimed  for  a 
Sylvester  judd,  story  that  is  certainly  curious  and  indi- 
1*13-1853.  vidual:  "Margaret;  a  Tale  of  the 
Real  and  the  Ideal,  Blight  and  Bloom,"  by  Syl 
vester  Judd.  Lowell,  in  "A  Fable  for  Critics," 
declared  it 

"  The  first  Yankee  book 

With  the  soul  of  Down  East  in't,  and  things  farther  East, 
As  far  as  the  threshold  of  morning,  at  least, 
Where  awaits  the  fair  dawn  of  the  simple  and  true, 
Of  the  day  that  comes  slowly  to  make  all  things  new." 

He  even  went  so  far  in  praise  of  its  author  as  to 
tell  his  countrymen  : 

"  His  name 

You'll  be  glad  enough,  some  day  or  other,  to  claim, 
And  will  all  crowd  about  him  and  swear  that  you  knew  him, 
If  some  English  hack-critic  should  chance  to  review  him." 

Judd's  recognition,  however,  never  came  in  any 
general  way,  though  a  fit  few  have  always  be 
stowed  upon  his  book  that  sort  of  admiration 
which  is  supposed  specially  to  distinguish  the 
thing  praised,  and  also  to  reflect  peculiar  bril 
liancy  upon  those  who  praise.  "  Margaret "  very 
narrowly  escapes  being-  unreadable,  as 

"  Margaret."  / 

an  entirety ;  the  accumulated  purpose 
of  years  was  required  to  make  successful  my  own 
second  attempt  to  reach  its  close ;  for  it  is  crude, 


The  Lesser  Novelists.  393 

careless,  irrelevant,  improbable,  and  at  times  weari 
somely  sermonic.  The  author's  ultimate  plan  was 
to  make  of  this  novel  a  sublimated  Unitarian  and 
American  "  Pilgrim's  Progress,"  portraying  true 
Christianity  and  the  large  means  of  its  propaga 
tion  among  a  free  and  enlightened  people.  That 
which  another  brilliant  and  efficient  Unitarian 
believer — Hale — attempted  a  generation  later  in 
the  most  realistic  and  practical  of  stories,  Judd 
sought  to  achieve  by  combining  pure  faith  and 
pure  moonshine  irt  an  idyllic  and  sensational 
novel  of  New  England  village  life  at  the  close  of 
the  last  century.  There  can  be  no  question,  how 
ever,  that  this  eccentric  story  is  marked  by  crude 
power  and  irregular  beauty.  The  social  and 
religious  "  progressive "  notions  of  the  time,  the 
homeland  love  of  a  patriotic  New  Englander,  and 
the  thoughts  of  a  prose-poet  were  curiously  jum 
bled  together,  so  that  "  Margaret"  is  dream,  pic 
ture,  and  riddle  in  one.  The  merit  of  loneliness, 
or  isolation  from  other  books  of  the  sort,  it  clearly 
possesses, 'and  its  religio-poetic  feeling  is  at  times 
almost  impressive.  Judd  was  an  idealist  through 
and  through,  loving  nature  with  all  his  heart,  yet 
burning  with  a  still  stronger  love  for  humanity. 
His  novel  is  a  sketch-book  of  snow-storms  and 
summers,  drunkenness  and  murder,  bird-songs  and 
sunbursts,  vulgar  poverty  and  flawless  virtue 
blessed  with  all  gifts  that  mortals  can  long  for, 
and  marching  onward  toward  a  beatific  and  regen 
erated  future  of  humanity.  The  faults  in  "  Mar 
garet  "  are  so  numerous  and  conspicuous  as  to 


394  American  Literature. 

remove  it  utterly  from  the  list  of  great  books,  but 
its  scattered  beauties  of  thought  and  word  are 
such  as  to  make  the  reader  regret  that  the  author 
so  lacked  all  shaping  power  of  art. 

Description  of  nature  and  of  out-door  experi 
ences  had  now  become  a  settled  element  in  many 
American  novels  ;  and  naturally,  in  a  country  still 

new,    the    fields    and    personages    con- 
Robert  Mont-  ....  ,  , 

gomery  Bird,  nected  with  pioneer  adventure  attracted 
the  pens  of  writers  in  nearly  all  the  sev 
eral  sections  of  the  United  States.  "  Nick  of  the 
Woods  ;  or,  The  Jibbenainosay  " — how  could  such 
a  title  fail  to  interest  eager  young  readers  every 
where,  and  turn  their  minds  once  more  toward  the 
unfelled  forests  of  the  far  west?  Its  author,  Dr. 
Bird,  had  been  an  experimenter,  deemed  success 
ful  in  his  day,  in  iRe~~wr! ting "  of  divers  melodra 
matic  plays,  and  had  produced  two  historical 
romances  of  old  Mexican  life.  It  was  his  good 
fortune  to  give  that  robust  actor  Edwin  Forrest 
one  of  his  more  conspicuous  successes,  in  the 
tragedy  of  "  The  Gladiator,"  with  its  muscular 
hero  Spartacus.  Something  exciting  or  imposing 
was  then  demanded  by  the  majority  of  people 
who  turned  to  the  play  or  novel  for  their  amuse 
ment ;  "The  Gladiator"  was  thought  to  merit 
both -adjectives,  and  "Nick  of  the  Woods"  at 
least  the  first.  It  was  dramatized,  and  long  held 
the  boards  without  impinging  very  seriously  upon 
the  domain  of  the  standard  literature  of  the  play. 
Such  stories,  after  all,  are  better  read  than  heard, 


The  Lesser  Novelists.  395 

notwithstanding  the  obvious  temptation  they  offer 
to  playwrights. 

The  most  marked  characteristic  of  the  tales  of 
adventure  produced  in  the  period  under  review 
rests  in  their  general  uniformity  of  style  a 
merit.  Parts  of  "Nick  of  the  Woods,"  selected 
at  random,  might  easily  be  supposed  to  be  ex 
tracted  from  one  of  Cooper's  land-stories,  while 
Cooper's  sea-tales  are  not  essentially  different 
from  some  of  the  opening  pages  of  Dr.  Mayo's 
"  Kaloolah."  Even  "The  Dutchman's  Fireside" 
of  Paulding,  notwithstanding  the  would-be  humor 
and  the  playful  touch  which  connect  it  with  the 
work  of  the  "  Knickerbocker  school,"  falls  into 
general  line  with  the  other  novels  of  exciting  epi 
sode.  Poe,  who  was  certainly  very  clever  in  some 
of  his  criticisms  upon  contemporary  work,  said 
justly  in  a  review  of  a  previous  novel  by  Bird— 
"  The  Hawks  of  Hawk  Hollow  :  a  Tradition  of 
Pennsylvania" — that  "  upon  the  whole  the  style 
of  the  novel — if  that  may  be  called  its  style, 
which  style  is  not — is  at  least  equal  to  that  of 
any  American  writer  whatsoever."  Elsewhere  he 
declared  it  to.be,  "in  many  respects,  a  bad  imita 
tion  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,"  "  composed  with  great 
inequality  of  manner — at  times  forcibly  and  manly 
—at  times  sinking  into  the  merest  childishness 
and  imbecility."  Fifty  years  do  not  add  much  to 
this  criticism,  which  was  applicable  to  dozens  of 
books  written  in  that  fertile  period.  The  pre 
scription  was  simple.  A  manly  adventurer  on 
land  or  sea,  an  "interesting  female,"  a  tomahawk- 


396  American  Literature. 

ing  Indian  after  scalps,  a  British  frigate  with  too 
few  guns  and  too  clumsy  sails,  together  with 
various  affluent  squires,  imposing  commanders, 
cowardly  villains,  rustic  wits,  and  housewifely 
matron,  were  all  that  was  needed  ;  the  plots  and 
escapes,  the  inland  or  marine  scenery,  the  earth 
quaking  thunder  and  the  swollen  torrents,  and 
the  final  matrimonial  adjustments  could  be  in 
serted  at  will.  Scott  was  the  distant  but  power 
fully  regnant  monarch,  and  Cooper  the  master  of 
ceremonies ;  those  who,  like  the  latter,  created 
original  characters  of  manly  force,  survived  the 
"  mutability  of  literature,"  while  those  in  whom 
"  the  merest  childishness  and  imbecility"  were  too 
generously  manifest  lost  very  promptly  their 
quickly-won  fame. 

The    Indian,    as    delineated    in    "Nick    of    the 

Woods,"  is  a  darker  and  more  repulsive  creature 

than  Cooper's  red    man.     Dr.   Bird's  view  of  the 

aboriginal    character    approximated    more    nearly 

to  Custer's  than  to  Crook's.*     Accordingly  he  did 

/not    hesitate    to    introduce     descriptions    merely 

f  brutal  and  gory,  illustrating  and  appealing  to  that 

\sentiment  in  human  nature  which  got   boundless 

<aelight  from  a  gladiatorial  combat  in  Rome,  and 

/which    still    falls    into    paroxysms   of  joy  when  a 

i  half-starved  bull,   in  Spain    or    Cuba,   is    at    last 

tortured  to  death    by  a  dozen  men.     It  must  be 

said  that  Dr.    Bird  had  plenty  of  intelligent  sup- 

/  porters  in  his  estimate  of  Indian  ferocity  and 
bloodiness  ;  but  its  literary  effect,  in  his  own  case 

See  vol.  i,  p.  4. 


The  Lesser  Novelists.  397 

at  least,  did  not  prove  advantageous.  Twenty  or 
thirty  years  after  the  appearance  of  "  Nick  of  the 
Woods,"  similar  stories  were  produced  in  abun 
dance  by  obscure  or  anonymous  writers,  bound  in 
salmon-colored  paper  covers,  and  known  every 
where  in  America  as  "  dime  novels,"  the  literary 
diet  of  the  lower  classes. 

Turning  southward,  as  we  follow  the  scenes 
depicted  by  the  novelists  of  the  period,  there  is 
found  in  the  books  of  John  P.  Kennedy  a  gentler 
temper  and  a  more  delicate  and  finished 

r  .  John  Pendle- 

touch.  The  very  title  of  his  best  work,  ton  Kennedy, 
"Swallow  Barn,"  forms  a  euphonious 
introduction  to  its  leisurely  and  pleasant  descrip 
tions  of  rural  scenes  and  character  in  the  Old 
Dominion.  It  is  a  sort  of  Virginian  "  Brace- 
bridge  Hall."  Kennedy,  like  Paulding,  filled  the 
office  of  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  and  well  illus 
trated  that  union  of  wholesome  manliness  with 
bookish  tastes  which  was  beginning  to  be  a  char 
acteristic  of  our  literature.  The  turmoil  of  Amer 
ican  politics  has  over  and  over  again  left  place, 
in  diplomatic  service  or  public  station  at  home, 
for  historians,  essayists,  novelists,  or  poets  who 
also  have  been,  like  Kennedy,  efficient  and  hon 
ored  servants  of  their  country  and  leaders  of  their 
party.  The  u  scholar  in  politics "  is  an  old,  old 
figure  in  the  United  States  ;  the  problem  to-day 
is  to  keep  him  in,  not  to  get  him  in. 

Kennedy  was  a  Marylander,  and  his  "  Rob  of 
the  Bowl,"  "Swallow  Barn,"  and  "Horse-Shoe 
Robinson  "  were  all  of  the  South,  being  devoted 


398  American  Literature. 

respectively  to  scenes  and  times  of  his  native 
state  (in  the  Roman  Catholic  Proprietary  days), 
Virginia,  and  South  Carolina  (in  the  revolution). 
The  first  and  last  differed  from  "  Swallow  Barn  " 
in  that  they  turned  definitely  to  the  field  of  his 
torical  fiction  rather  than  to  the  portrayal  of 
country  life  in  a  placid  story.  Had  Kennedy's 
graceful  pen  been  driven  by  a  genius  more  force 
fully  creative  the  result  of  his  life-long  devotion 
to  literature  would  have  been  more  considerable. 

The    representative  Southern    man    of    letters, 

after  Poe  and  before  Cable,  Hayne,  and   Lanier, 

was  William  Gilmore  Simms.      His  brain  and  pen 

were  never  idle,  and  he  essayed  nearly 

William  Gil-  J  J 

more  simms,   every    sort    of    writing.       Though    far 

1806-1870.  J       •          U-        C  1?    /-  V        \ 

removed,  in  his  bouth  Carolina  home, 
from  the  greater  publishing  centres,  libraries, 
colleges,  and  author-coteries,  Simms  was  poet, 
dramatist,  Shakespearean  editor,  essayist,  apho 
ristic  philosopher,  historian,  biographer,  lecturer, 
commemorative  orator,  legislator,  pro-slavery 
apologist,  journalist,  magazinist,  critic,  and,  above 
all,  novelist.  Authors  have  been  hacks,  helpers, 
or  wage-earners  since  the  art  of  writing  was 
invented  ;  but  Simms'  industry  and  fertility  are 
remarkable  in  view  of  his  environment,  which  was 
not  favorable  to  such  facile  and  miscellaneous  pro 
ductiveness.  The  novels,  naturally,  have  survived 
the  other  writings,  so  that  the  " works"  of  Simms 
have  come  to  mean,  in  publishers'  parlance, 
merely  the  best  of  his  romantic  or  historical  fic 
tions.  The  most  attractive  part  of  the  novels,  to 


The  Lesser  Novelists.  399 

tell  the  truth,  is  their  titles.     One  rolls  from  the 
tongue,    with    a   certain    pleasure,    the    names    of 
Simms'  best  books  :  "  The    Partisan,   a  Romance 
of  the  Revolution  "  ;  "  The  Yemassee,  a  Romance 
of  Carolina";  "  Beauchampe,  or,   The  Kentucky 
Tragedy";    "  Southward    Ho!    a    Spell    of    Sun 
shine."     When  Southerners  took  up  "  The  Wig 
wam  and  the  Cabin  "  or  "  Mellichampe,  a  Legend 
of  the  Santee,"  the  very  names  made  them  feel 
that  a  literature  had  sprung   from  the  sod.     The 
whole  list  of  his  writings  is  here  and  there  sugges 
tive  of   historic  men    and  events  in  the  Carolina 
belt,  or  of  the  romance  of  adventure  and  discov 
ery  elsewhere  in  America  and  abroad  ;  as  well  as 
of  miscellaneous  domestic  or  cheaply  sensational 
themes.      Purely    exciting    methods — the    bowie- 
knife,  the  struggle,  the  revenge,  the  rescue — were 
often    employed    by    Simms,    whose   hurried    and 
careless  pen  would  turn  from  "  Eutaw"  to  "  Rich 
ard  Hurdis,  or,    The    Avenger   of    Blood";  from 
"The  Damsel  of  Darien  "   to  "The   Kinsmen,  or, 
The  Black  Riders  of  the   Congaree  "  ;  or,   again, 
from  far-away  "  Pelayo,  a  Story  of  the  Goth"  to 
"  The    Golden     Christmas,    a    Chronicle    of  St. 
John's,  Berkeley."     Simms  was  a  sort  of   Ameri 
can  G.  P.  R.  James,  without  James'  regularity  in 
quality    of    literary    product.       His    tales    highly 
interested  a  local  audience  because  of  their  patri 
otic  and  sectional   pictures   and  temper,  and  they 
were  valued  elsewhere  as  contributions  toward  the 
delineation  of  an  important  American  region   in 
an  indigenous  fiction.     The  romantic  novelists  of 


4OO  American  Literature. 

the  time  turned  most  eagerly  toward  themes  of 
Indian  adventure,  pioneer  settlement  or  Revolu 
tionary  struggle,  and  therein  they  began,  at  least, 
to  do  wisely,  according  to  the  limitations  of  their 
day.  The  portrayal  of  living  folk-life  was  to 
come  later,  for  in  Simms'  time  a  "historic  back 
ground  "  was  commonly  deemed  essential.  In 
deed,  the  unpolished  style,  and  the  constant 
striving  for  immediate  and  striking  effects,  which 
characterized  his  fiction,  were  unfavorable  to  the 
production  of  novels  of  society,  in  the  full  sense, 
or  of  stories  recording  the  characteristic  vitality  of 
actual  existence  in  the  region  best  known  to  the 
author.  This  fault  was  partly  incident  to  the 
time,  which  influenced  the  man  unfavorably ;  for 
Simms  sometimes  excelled  in  spontaneous  pictur 
esque  description,  while  his  familiar  letters  or 
comments  on  men  are  couched  in  excellent  and 
telling  phrase.  There  is  no  inconsistency  in  say 
ing  that  Simms  won  considerable  note  because  he 
was  so  sectional,  and  has  lost  it  because  he  was 
not  sectional  enough.  His  stories  are  Southern 
and  characteristic,  but  to  paint  actualities  and 
things  present — as  do  Cable,  Miss  Murfree,  and 
the  interesting  group  of  young  Southern  writers 
—was  not  his  chief  purpose.  The  tinge  of  the 
past  and  the  imaginary  is  thrown  over  most  of  the 
plots  and  descriptions,  yet  without  that  full  and 
deliberate  idealization  which  is  needed.  Haw 
thorne,  in  "The  Scarlet  Letter"  or  "The  Marble 
Faun  ",  so  describes  things  far  in  time  or  space 
that  the  men  and  women  seem  of  our  own  spirit- 


The  Lesser  Novelists.  401 

ual  world,  and  yet  are  helped  or  tempted  by 
moral  and  mental  forces  from  out  the  infinite. 
Cooper,  with  all  his  faults,  is  a  novelist  of  large 
humanity,  and  hence  a  novelist  of  many  lands  and 
of  more  than  one  time.  We  do  not  ask  Simms  to 
be  a  Hawthorne ;  but  in  Cooper's  field,  at  least, 
he  should  have  been  either  a  romancer  of  the  past 
or  a  picturer  of  the  present,  if  he  could  not  be 
both.  Between  the  two  fields  of  fiction,  as  we 
now  insist  upon  separating  them,  he  has  no  place. 
It  may  be  that  future  fashions  in  literature  will 
restore  to  him  some  part  of  a  lost  fame  ;  but  such 
is  not  likely  to  be  the  case.  Save  for  the  masters, 
the  world  turns  its  face  not  backward  in  the 
search  for  stories. 

The  best  novel  written  in  the  Southern  States 
before  the  civil  war  is  "  The  Virginia  Comedians  " 
of  John  Esten  Cooke.  Its  author,  like  Simms, 
was  an  inveterate  book-maker,  and  belonged  dis 
tinctly  to  the  romantic-sentimental  school,  not  the 
realistic.  He  aimed  to  produce  novels  and  nov 
elettes  of  incident  or  passion,  rather  than  sketches 
of  local  scenes  and  characters.  The  John  Esten  Cooke> 
past  of  Virginia  was  more  vivid,  in  1830-1886. 

his  mind,  than  her  present.  But  his  stories  are 
not  sensational,  in  the  sanguinary  sense  ;  and  they 
describe  certain  conditions  of  an  ancient  and  half 
courtly  society.  Instead  of  wigwam  and  cabin, 
Cooke  presents  the  chariots  and  brocades,  the 
"  palace"  and  capital,  the  statesmen  and  beauties 
of  picturesque  old  Williamsburg,  once  the  South 
ern  Boston.  To  its  streets  and  mansions,  its 
26 


4O2  American  Literature. 

Raleigh  Tavern  and  early  theatre,  he  returns 
more  than  once,  and  in  and  near  them  occurs 
the  action  of  "The  Virginia  Comedians."  John 
Esten  Cooke  was  himself  an  honorable  represent 
ative  of  the  best  blood  of  the  ancien  regime — 
gentle,  courtly,  affectionate,  unselfish,  and  brave  ; 
and  his  masterpiece  is  a  series  of  historic  pictures, 
warmed  by  bygone  sunshine  and  given  true  spirit 
by  the  sympathetic  promptings  of  the  maker's 
heart.  If  "background"  is  needed  in  our  fiction, 
it  assuredly  is  here — that  background  in  front  of 
which  stood,  in  his  college  days,  the  first  states 
man,  after  Washington,  of  the  early  republic.  If 
we  seek  color  and  action  in  a  varied  society, 
Thackeray  himself  asked  no  better,  though  he 
understood  the  scene  and  time  less  perfectly. 
Cooke,  a  fierce  fighter  in  the  war,  was  as  sensible 
and  kindly  as  Lee  at  its  close,  nor  in  his  books 
did  he  display  Simms'  silly  contempt  for  his 
Northern  betters,  nor  Cooper's  or  Poe's  angry 
hatred  of  New  England.  His  aim,  says  an  anony 
mous  eulogist,  "  was  to  do  for  Virginia  what 
Simms  had  done  for  South  Carolina,  Cooper  for 
the  Indian  and  frontier  life,  Irving  for  the  quaint 
old  Knickerbocker  times  and  Hawthorne  for  the 
weird  Puritan  life  of  New  England."  The  mod 
esty  of  the  author  himself  would  have  made  no 
such  claim,  for  none  more  clearly  perceived  or 
frankly  stated  his  general  failure.  He  was,  like 
Cable,  wisely  philosophic  as  to  the  futility  of 
special  pleas  in  literature.  "If,"  said  he,  "there 
is  anything  endurable  in  Southern  literature,  I 


The  Lesser  Novelists.  403 

feel  sure  that  it  will  take  care  of  itself."  But  this 
"  Virginian  of  the  Virginians ",  as  he  has  been 
termed,  this  cousin  and  fellow-worker  of  John  P. 
Kennedy's,  left  his  state  no  unworthy  literary 
legacy.  When  "The  Virginia  Comedians"  fell 
out  of  print,  it  was  for  years  one  of  the  most 
sought  of  American  novels  ;  re-issued,  it  was  wel 
comed  ;  nor  does  it  cease  to  interest  those  who 
turn,  from  time  to  time,  to  the  study  of  a  phase  of 
life  not  less  attractive  because  its  antique  grand 
eur  now  seems  as  faded  and  thin  as  the  garreted 
satins  in  which  it  once  was  resplendent. 

At  this  period  English  and  American  literature 
(of  course  including  poetry  and  prose  fiction) 
were  beginning  to  feel  the  scientific  and  economic 
influence  of  the  age, — an  age  which  on  its  super 
ficial  side  was  searching  for  facts  rather  than 
dreams  or  fancies.  Periodical  literature,  too,  was 
multiplying  a  miscellaneous  but  in  its  way  some 
what  definite  sort  of  information,  and  was  thereby 
responding  to  a  public  curiosity,  and  creating  it 
as  well.  Reflective  or  imaginative  sentimentalism 
was  presently  to  yield,  in  part,  to  the  wide-spread 
wish  for  some  new  thing.  The  clever  pseudo-sci 
entific  tales  of  Poe  made  answer  to  this  wish,  yet 
without  sacrifice  of  integrity  of  literary  merit ;  and 
were  followed  by  a  long  line  of  American,  Eng 
lish,  and  French  imitations.  Another  response 
was  made  by  Herman  Melville  in  his  brisk  Herman 
and  stirring  tales  of  the  sea  or  sketches  Melville, 
of  travel,  in  which  fact  and  fancy  were 
mingled  by  the  nervously  impatient  author,  in 


404  American  Literature. 

the  proportion  desired  by  his  immediate  public- 
Melville's  own  adventures  had  been  those  of  a 
modern  Captain  John  Smith  in  the  Pacific  islands 
and  waters  ;  so  that  the  pars  magna  fui  of  his 
lively  books  gave  them  the  needed  fillip  of  person 
ality,  and  duly  magnified  their  elements  of  won 
der.  That  brilliant  power  of  delineation  which, 
in  Melville's  conversation,  so  charmed  his  warm 
friends  the  Hawthornes,  is  apparently  not  height 
ened  in  his  books,  but  would  seem  to  be  rather 
diminished  by  the  exigencies  of  writing.  But 
the  personal  narrative  or  fiction  of  "  Typee," 
"  Omoo,"  and  "  Moby  Dick,"  with  their  adventur 
ous  rapidity  of  description  of  Pacific  seas,  ships, 
savages  and  whales,  represented  the  restless  facil 
ity  which  has  always  been  an  American  trait,  and 
which  occasionally  develops  into  some  enduring 
literary  success. 

Dr.  W.  S.  Mayo,  like  Melville,  had  endured 
William  starbuck  many  vicissitudes  of  travel  and 
Mayo,  b.  1812.  adventure,  and  in  his  African  ro 
mance  "  Kaloolah,  or  Journeyings  to  the  Djebel 
Kumri,  an  Autobiography  of  Jonathan  Romer," 
he  drew  upon  his  experiences  abroad  and  at 
home,  reverting  to  his  school-days  in  northern 
New  York,  and  to  his  father's  marine  exploits. 
That  "  Kaloolah "  has  barely  outlived  Melville's 
sprightly  but  now  forgotten  improvisations  in  lit 
erature  is  due  to  the  combination,  in  its  pictures 
of  a  far-away  world,  of  the  improbably  romantic 
and  the  obviously  satirical.  Melville  made  some 
essays  in  the  same  direction,  but  failed  completely 


The  Lesser  Novelists.  405 

for  lack  of  a  firm  thought  and  a  steady  hand.  In 
Mayo's  book  the  marvellously  adventurous  Jona 
than  Romer,  at  last  the  husband  of  an  African 
princess,  turns  a  reflective  eye  back  upon  the 
triumphs  and  foibles  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  political 
and  social  system  which  he  has  left  behind. 
Often,  since  the  coarse  and  strong  "  Travels  of 
Mr.  Lemuel  Gulliver,"  have  adventure  and  satire 
been  mingled,  and  not  infrequently  with  some 
such  moderate  success  as  Mayo  here  won ;  for  no 
device  is  simpler  than  to  change  one's  outlook  in 
place  and  time,  and  survey  mankind  with  the 
amusement  found  in  a  new  perspective. 

In  the  same  search  for  novelty  of  theme,  scene, 
and  time,  American  fiction  turned  far  backward 
toward  the  picturesque  history  of  the  classic  past 
of  Rome.  Ware's  "  Zenobia,"  "  Aure-  wmiam  Ware, 
lian,"  and  "Julian,"  with  their  occa-  '797-185*' 
sionally  stately — and  sometimes  stiff — descriptions 
of  venerable  bygones,  really  indicated,  as  truly  as 
"Moby  Dick"  or  "  Kaloolah,"  that  American 
writers  were  trying  to  broaden  their  field  at  the 
demand  of  a  broadening  public.  Ware  failed  to 
equal  such  later  books — in  themselves  not  com 
parable  with  "Hypatia"  or  "Uarda" — as  Wal 
lace's  "  Ben-Hur  "  or  Crawford's  "  Zoroaster"  ; 
indeed,  the  whole  world  never  produced  ten  great 
historical  novels,  aside  from  those  of  Scott.  His 
torical  fiction  is  as  tempting  and  seemingly  easy 
as  blank  verse,  but  few  men  are  so  masterly  as  to 
win  success  in  either.  But  Ware,  in  his  "  Letters 
from  Palmyra"  ("Zenobia")  showed  himself  not 


406  American  Literaticre. 

destitute  of  that  poetic  imagination  which  is  able 
to  reproduce  some  part  of  the  pageantry  and  the 
persecutions,  the  might  and  the  weakness,  of 
Rome  in  her  splendid  decline. 

It  should  not  be  supposed  that  the  fiction  of 
the  period  was  wholly  given  up  to  tales  of  pioneer 
adventure,  romantic  travel,  or  glorious  antiquity  ; 
to  the  Virginian  historic  pictures  of  Cooke  ;  or  to 
Judd's  Utopian  dreams  of  regenerated  man.  Stiff 
moral  sentiment,  dressed  in  a  garb  that  now  seems 
somewhat  artificial  and  extravagant,  but  which 
exactly  suited  the  fashion  of  the  day,  was  the  lay- 
figure  that  stood  beside  the  desk  of  many  a  nov 
elist.  Catharine  Sedgwick,  who  connected  the 
earlier  and  the  later  days,  could  write 

Catharine  Maria  . 

Sedgwick,  a  story  of  adventure  which  some  were 

1789-1867.  i  f^  , 

once  ready  to  assign  to  Cooper  s  pen. 

But  her  axiomatic  novels  chiefly  aim  to  show  that 
honest  poverty  is  better  than  hollow  wealth  ;  that 
mistresses  should  know  something  about  house 
work  and  treat  their  servants  humanely  ;  that  self- 
improvement  should  be  a  constant  study ;  that 
deportment  portrays  the  inner  man  ;  that  single 
life  is  an  honorable  estate  for  woman  ;  and  that 
the  New  England  homestead  is  a  pleasant  place. 

Miss  Sedgwick,  in  addition  to  her  novels,  wrote 
several  stories  for  children.  It  is  not  customary, 
in  literary  history,  to  include  juvenile  books  in  the 
list  of  works  worthy  of  serious  mention,  nor  to 
discuss  them  as  related  to  the  intellectual  tenden 
cies  of  the  time.  The  classics  of  childhood  were 
not,  it  is  true,  primarily  written  for  children  ;  the 


The  Lesser  Novelists.  407 

"  Arabian  Nights  "  are  folk-products  ;  the  "  Pil 
grim's  Progress  "  is  the  most  serious  of  allegories  ; 
"  Robinson  Crusoe  "  is  a  tale  of  a  typical  English 
man,  thrown  utterly  on  his  own  resources  ;  while 
"  Gulliver's  Travels  "  aimed  to  be  a  vitriolic  satire 
upon  humanity  itself.  But  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  when  the  Grimms  in  Germany,  Hugo  in 
France,  Scott  in  England,  and  Hawthorne  in 
America  address  a  child-public  and  meanwhile 
attract  child-hearted  readers  of  every  age,  it  is 
manifestly  too  late  to  ignore  the  "  juvenile  "  as  an 
honorable  contribution  to  literature  in  the  depart 
ment  of  fiction,  and  not  measure  it  by  general 
canons.  In  America  many  writers,  from  Lydia 
Maria  Child  to  Miss  Alcott,  have  developed  the 
juvenile ;  but  the  representative  name  of  all,  a 
name  well  entitled  to  consideration  here,  is  that 
of  Jacob  Abbott. 

In  the  course  of  a  literary  life  of  unremitting 
activity,  Abbott  wrote  one  hundred  jacob  Abbott, 
and  eighty  volumes  with  his  own  pen,  1803-1879. 
and  in  addition  wrote  in  part,  or  edited,  thirty- 
one.  Most  of  these  were  not  of  great  size,  but 
not  a  few  of  them  called  for  patient  and  some 
times  extended  research  in  historic  or  scientific 
fields.  I  know  not  what  American  author  has 
produced  a  larger  library,  or  one  more  wholesome 
and  helpful  throughout.  These  books  fall  natu 
rally  into  six  divisions :  religion,  education,  sci 
ence,  travel,  history,  and  juvenile  fiction ;  the 
representative  types  of  which  are  "  The  Young 
Christian,"  the  "  Little  Learner  Series,"  the  "  Sci- 


408  American  Literature. 

ence  for  the  Young"  series,  "  A  Summer  in  Scot 
land,"  "Abbott's  Illustrated  Histories"  (written 
in  part  by  John  S.  C.  Abbott,  the  author's 
brother),  and  the  "  Rollo  Books"  and  "  Franconia 
Stories."  Abbott  created  and  systematically  con 
tinued  and  popularized  a  characteristic  style,  in 
which  didacticism  and  interest  were  pleasingly 
joined.  To  tell  an  instructive  story  in  an  attract 
ive  way,  and  thereby  to  impress  his  mark  upon 
his  time,  was  his  life-work  in  letters.  The  clear 
style,  the  manner  of  the  dialogue,  the  introduction 
of  anecdote  and  explanation,  the  choice  and 
arrangement  of  pictorial  illustrations,  and  even 
the  typographical  appearance,  were  the  author's 
own,  and  have  never  been  exactly  reproduced  by 
any  of  his  many  imitators.  Abbott  was  as  closely 
related  to  his  day  as  the  authors  of  "  Evenings  at 
Home  "  were  to  theirs.  If,  as  his  son  and  biogra 
pher  says,  "  The  Young  Christian  "  is  his  most 
representative  work,  the  long  list  of  historical 
biographies,  and  the  "  Franconia  Stories,"  are  his 
best  products.  To  the  former  Abraham  Lincoln 
professed  his  indebtedness  for  about  all  the  histor 
ical  knowledge  he  had  ;  to  the  latter  belongs  the 
name  of  New  England's  classics  for  children. 
The  United  States  is  a  nation  of  readers,  and 
in  an  altogether  exceptional  degree  a  nation  of 
young  readers  ;  Abbott  found  the  inclination,  and 
at  once  addressed  it  and  developed  it  by  his  work. 
To  claim  that  his  stories  and  biographies  have  a 
high  literary  rank  would  be  unwise  ;  to  deny  their 
place  in  the  development  of  American  letters 


The  Lesser  Novelists.  409 

would  be  false.  In  themselves,  and  yet  more  in 
their  indications,  they  stand  for  a  nineteenth-cent 
ury  habit  of  authorship  which,  notwithstanding 
the  production  by  some  hands  of  a  wearisome 
amount  of  worthlessness,  is  likely  to  increase  in 
importance  with  the  passing  years. 

Turning^  again  from  the  juvenile  story  to  the 
general  field  of  fiction,  one  notes,  with  not 
unkindly  interest,  that  a  "  phenomenal  success," 
in  days  of  eager  reading  and  impressionable 
"  sensibility,"  was  won  in  particular  by  three 
stories,  all  written  by  women,  and  all  attaining 
a  circulation  to  be  reckoned  by  hundreds  of 
thousands.  Of  the  three  "  The  Wide,  Wide 
World "  of  Miss  Susan  Warner  was  the  worst 
in  itself  and  the  best-loved  by  the  Susan  Warner, 
public.  All  literature  cannot  show  so  1818-1885. 
lachrymose  a  book ;  the  heroine  burst  into  tears, 
silent  or  paroxysmal,  in  accordance  with  a  numeri 
cal  average  amounting  to  every-other  page  of  the 
two-volume  novel.  The  piety  of  the  work  is 
unquestionable,  and  it  is  still  deemed  a  strong 
story  by  those  who  read  it  in  impressionable  girl 
hood  and  have  not  since  refreshed  their  memory 
by  recurring  to  its  briny  springs.  "  The  Lamp 
lighter,"  by  Miss  Cummins,  though  somewhat 
exclamatory  and  didactic,  was  more  natural  in  its 
honestly  human  tone  ;  had  it  been  com-  Maria  g 
pressed  by  an  artist  within  the  limits  of  ^™866' 
Dickens'  "Cricket  on  the  Hearth"  it 
would  have  been  a  worthier  addition  to  the  litera 
ture  that  lives  more  than  a  decade. 


American  Literature. 

Midway  between  the  appearance  of  "  The  Wide, 

Wide  World  "  and  "  The  Lamplighter,"  two  years 

after  the  one  and  two  years  before  the  other,  was 

published,   in    1852,  _that    novel  which    exerted   a 

moral  force  in  politics  unequalled  in 

Harriet  Elizabeth     .         ..  f    £        i»    t      /•      •  TT 

(Beecher)  stowe,  the  history  of  English  fiction.  Har 
riet  Beecher  Stowe,  had  she  never 
written  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  would  have  held 
at  least  a  respectable  place  among  American 
authors.  New  England  home-life  on  the  coasts 
of  Maine  and  Rhode  Island  is  aptly  described  in 
"The  Pearl  of  Orr's  Island"  and  "The  Minister's 
Wooing";  while  "  Oldtown  Folks"  and  "  Oldtown 
Fireside  Stories"  are  excellent  additions  to  our 
rich  library  of  folk-sketches.  In  Sam  Lawson 
Mrs.  Stowe  created  a  character  as  true  to  the  life, 
in  his  way,  as  Lowell's  Hosea  Biglow.  All  this 
other  work,  however,  is  not  indispensable,  and 
pales  before  the  intense  fire  that  has  long  glowed 
in  the  pages  of  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin."  In  the  far 
cold  North,  where  her  husband  was  at  the  time  a 
professor  in  Bowdoin  College,  Mrs.  Stowe  looked 
toward  the  sunlit  South,  and  beheld  beneath  fair 
skies  all  the  horror  of  the  wide-spread  and  blight 
ing  evil  of  human  slavery,  with  its  curses  of  lust 
and  lash,  broken  homes  and  bleeding  hearts  ;  hate 
and  cruelty  and  greed  on  the  one  hand,  and  the 
dogged  endurance  of  hopeless  woe  on  the  other. 
The  horrible  system  of  slavery  was  not  unmiti 
gated  by  occasional  kindness ;  many  a  freedman 
has  sincerely  said  that  sorrow  and  suffering  never 
came  until  abolition  severed  him  from  the  old 


The  Lesser  Novelists.  411 

master  and  mistress,  and  threw  him  all  unfit  upon 
the  world,  with  a  ballot  in  his  hand  but  no  wisdom 
in  his  brain.  Yet  no  question  of  past  political 
expediency,  no  consideration,  even,  of  exaggera 
tion  in  the  book,  as  regards  the  average  condition 
of  the  negroes  in  the  Southern  States,  can  blind 
our  eyes  to  the  essential  and  enduring  success  of 
the  novel.  It  is  far  from  faultless  in  development 
of  plot,  delineation  of  character,  or  literary  style  ; 
but  it  strongly  seizes  a  significant  theme,  treats  it 
with  immediate  originality  and  inevitable  effect, 
and  meanwhile  adds  several  individual  characters 
to  the  gallery  of  fiction.  It  was  everywhere  an 
anti-slavery  argiiiiiejiL_J2££ause  its  pictures  of 
episodes  in  the  history  of  slavery  were  so  manifest 
and  so  thrilling.  Read  in  every  state  of  the  North 
and  in  parts  of  the  South,  and  translated  into 
twenty  languages  of  Europe,  it  aroused  the  in 
different  and  quickened  the  philanthropic.  Its 
power  was  felt,  perhaps  unconsciously,  before  a 
quarter  of  its  pages  had  been  read. 

The  author  of  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin"  had  the 
wisdom — not  possessed  by  the  pessimistic  or  self- 
blinded  delineators  of  later  woes  in  Russia — to 
brighten  her  pages  by  touches  of  humor  and 
kindly  humanity,  and  to  obey  the  canons  of  the 
novelist's  art  as  well  as  those  of  the  moralist's  con 
science.  Thereby  her  force  was  quadrupled,  for 
literature  both  popularizes  and  perpetuates  moral 
ity,  while  morality  without  art  is  fatal  to  litera 
ture.  The  book  remains  a  vivid  panorama  of 
people  and  scene  in  a  bygone  time,  now  re- 


4I2 


American  Liter at^lre. 


manded  by  final  war  to  a  past  that  must  ever  be 
historic  and  can  never  be  repeated.  The  "  aboli 
tion  of  tribal  relations  in  Christ"  was  the  broad 
theme  of  a  Christian  woman  ;  and  in  treating  it 
she  produced  an  art-result  of  such  inherent  merit 
that  the  hand  helped  the  soul  as  much  as  the  soul 
the  hand. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

LATER   MOVEMENTS    IN    AMERICAN    FICTION. 

As  the  closing  years  of  the  nineteenth  century 
have  worn  away,  fiction  has  monopolized  more 
and  more  of  the  attention  of  writers  and  readers 
in  England  and  America.  As  a  means  of  popular 
amusement  it  has  completely  overshadowed  the 
drama ;  and  it  has  demanded  for  itself  three- 
fourths  of  the  circulation  of  many  public  libraries. 
The  masters — Thackeray,  Dickens,  George  Eliot, 
Hugo,  Tourgueneff,  Cooper,  Hawthorne,  Poe — 
have  departed,  leaving  no  successors  for  the  time 
being ;  but  the  hope  of  easily  winning  money  or 
notoriety,  mayhap  even  fame,  has  crowded  the 
literary  ranks  with  story-tellers  of  every  temper, 
theme  and  residence  and  of  every  ability  save  the 
highest.  Watching  the  motley  procession  of  fic 
tion-makers,  the  critic  is  tempted  to  say  with 
Omar  Khayyam : 

"A  moment's  halt — a  momentary  taste 
Of  Being  from  the  well  amid  the  waste — 
And  lo  ! — the  phantom  caravan  has  reach'd 
The  Nothing  it  set  out  from — oh,  make  haste  ! " 

But  the  later  and  younger  story-tellers,  novel 
ists,  and  romancers  of  America  have  brought  to 
their  work  a  zealous  if  irregular  ambition,  a  com- 


414  American  Literature. 

prehensive  eye,  and  a  skilful  pen.  Their  best 
short  stories  are  unsurpassed  in  the  literature  of 
the  time  ;  and  while  few  indeed  of  their  books  or 
names  will  live, — half  a  generation  sometimes 
envelops  a  novelist's  "  fame"  in  permanent  shade, 
—the  average  excellence  of  their  work  proves 
clearly  enough  the  general  resources  of  the  Amer 
ican  mind  in  this  division  of  literature,  and  the 
certainty  with  which  "  the  long  result  of  time " 
promises  to  produce,  once  more,  works  of  genius 
and  imagination  in  the  full  sense.  American 
story-tellers  since  the  civil  war  have  shown  powers 
distinctly  in  advance  of  those  of  the  lesser  novel 
ists  in  the  years  immediately  preceding  that  con 
flict  ;  and  their  keener  vision  and  simpler  methods 
have  summoned  before  us  many  American  types 
and  scenes  previously  unnoted  or  unfamiliar. 
This  manifest  improvement  in  the  quality  of 
minor  fiction  since  1861  has  been  chiefly  due  to 
an  honest  attempt  to  describe  American  life  as  it 
is,  in  its  breadth,  height,  and  depth. 

These  later  writers  of  fiction,  however,  though 
they  fill  a  large  place  in  the  immediate  literary 
landscape,  have  not  completed  their  work  nor 
given  sure  indication  of  their  ultimate  place  in  the 
intellectual  history  of  their  country.  Many  of 
them  are  still  in  youth  or  middle  life,  with  their 
larger  hopes  unfulfilled  and  their  more  ambitious 
plans  unmatured.  The  only  valuable  method  of 
studying  their  works  is  obviously  to  pay  small 
heed  to  single  volumes  or  individual  writers, 
though  intrinsically  more  praiseworthy  than  some 


Later  Movements  in  American  Fiction.    415 

of  their  predecessors  chronicled  in  these  pages ; 
and  simply  to  take  note  of  the  principal  tenden 
cies  of  the  American  fiction  of  the  time.  This 
may  readily  and  profitably  be  done,  for  the  lines 
of  subject  and  method  are  drawn  with  sufficient 
clearness  to  serve  both  as  a  record  and  as  a  proph 
ecy. 

The  first  and  most  significant  tendency,  as  I 
have  said,  is  toward  the  production  of  novels  of 
the  soil,  and  the  presentation  of  American  types 
and  scenes.  The  earlier  writers  had  indeed  fol 
lowed  to  some  extent  this  obvious  and  common 
method,  but  their  successors  have  discovered  new 
fields  and  characters,  even  more  typical  and  inter 
esting  because  less  enveloped  in  the  haze  of  the 
authors'  own  intellectual  fancy.  They  have  given 
large  play  to  humanity,  with  its  hopes,  fears, 
loves,  hates,  and  ordinary  experiences  ;  and  a  true 
realism  has  portrayed  men  and  women  as  they 
are, — creatures  with  souls  as  well  as  bodies  and 
minds.  The  portrayal  has  been  more  successful 
in  sketch  than  in  finished  picture,  in  short  story 
than  in  rounded  novel ;  but  it  has  been  well  worth 
making,  and  has  been  well  made.  The  dash,  and 
fresh  wholesomeness,  and  full-blooded  life  of 
the  hastily-written  and  posthumously-published 
tales  of  Theodore  Winthrop,  issued  in  the  midst 
of  the  civil  war,  fitly  ushered  in  a  fashion  of  plain 
truth-telling  in  fiction,  which  never-  Theodore  winthrop, 
theless  remembered  that  life  has  1828-1861. 

its  color  and  romance  as  well  as  its  dun  tameness, 
and  that  from  its  wood  and  ashes  the  fire  of  aspi- 


4i  6  American  Literature. 

ration  flames  up  toward  the  ideal.  The  war  itself 
produced,  North  and  South,  no  novel  of  com 
manding  importance — wars  seldom  effect  general 
literature  with  immediate  force,  though  their  ulti 
mate  stimulus  is  greater ;  but  this  circumstance  is 
of  small  significance  in  view  of  the  fact  that  upon 
the  pages  of  our  fiction  are  fully  drawn  the  charac 
ter  and  lives  of  the  men — and  women — who  fought 
that  war  and  who  make  the  nation  what  it  is. 

New  England  itself,  already  old,  sometimes 
conventional,  and  not  previously  destitute  of  au 
thors  of  ability,  has  been  newly  painted  by  several 
of  these  later  writers.  Sarah  O.  Jewett  portrays 
Sarah  Ome  jewett,  tne  ancient,  decadent,  respectable, 
b- l849*  gentle,  and  winsome  seaboard 

town,  and  tells  of  the  life  therein.  The  courtly 
old  lady  in  black  lace  cap  and  mitts,  living  in  a 
great  square  house  with  a  hall  running  from  door 
to  door,  and  rich  in  mahogany  and  cool  quiet ; 
the  New  England  girl  of  the  better  class,  well 
educated,  of  good  descent,  and  sufficiently  aware 
of  the  proprieties  of  life,  yet  fresh,  happy,  and 
fond  of  a  " good  time"-— these  two  figures  are 
alone  worth  more,  as  contributions  to  fiction, 
than  any  artificial  portrayals  of  the  "  sparkling," 
sensational,  or  satirical  talking-machines  which 
are  sometimes  supposed  to  represent  American 
life.  In  the  New  England  which  Miss  Jewett  so 
pleasantly  and  faithfully  portrays,  are  self-respect 
ing  people,  aristocratic  in  the  only  true  sense ; 
bringing  up  their  daughters  in  freedom,  and  yet 
in  homes,  modestly  but  not  conventually ;  speak- 


Later  Movements  in  American  Fiction.     417 

ing  the  good  English  which  their  ancestors 
brought  from  old  England  two  centuries  ago  ;  and 
making,  as  well  as  finding,  "  life  worth  living." 

Naturalism,  by  which  term  Miss  Jewett's 
general  method  may  be  fitly  described,  also  char 
acterizes  the  literary  work  of  other  New  England 
women.  Thus,  for  instance,  let  him  who  would 
know  the  real  Yankee— Doctor  Jekyll  and  Mr. 
Hyde — read  such  grimly  humorous  stories  as 
"  Freedom  Wheeler's  Controversy  with  Provi 
dence,"  "Miss  Lucinda,"  or  "The  Deacon's 
Week,"  by  Rose  Terry  Cooke.  The  Rose  (Terry) 
longer  and  shorter  stories  of  Miss  Cooke> b- 1827- 
Elizabeth  Stuart  Phelps  are  more  intense  than 
those  of  Miss  Jewett ;  but  they  Elizabeth  Stuart 
are  also  local  in  scene  and  color,  Pheips,  b.  i844. 
and,  like  Mrs.  Cooke's,  are  pervaded  with 
a  moral  idea.  Miss  Phelps  deals  with  stormier 
moods  and  with  profounder  aspirations,  but 
the  New  England  books  of  the  three  writers 
differ  in  selected  type  and  intensity  of  tone  rather 
than  in  kind.  If  it  be  said  that  Miss  Phelps' 
glimpses  of  the  unseen  in  "The  Gates  Ajar"  and 
"  Beyond  the  Gates  "  open  a  heaven  that  is  little 
more  than  a  reconstructed  New  England,  and  fail 
to  portray  adequately  the  tender  human  hopes 
and  deep  and  true  beliefs  which  lay  in  the  author's 
mind,  let  it  not  be  forgotten  that  hope  and  faith 
and  sympathy,  on  the  human  side,  find  a  fit  ex 
pression  in  such  stories  of  hers  as  "The  Tenth  of 
January,"  in  which  the  tragedy  of  life  and  the 
27 


4i 8  American  Literature. 

tragedy  of  art  combine,  before  the  background  of 
a  New  England  factory  town. 

A  simpler,  less  intense  and  nervous,  and  more 
genial  and  humorous  naturalism  is  the  distinguish 
ing  note  of  the  stories  of  Louisa  M.  Alcott. 
Their  fresh  and  staid  spirit — for  childhood  is 
demure  as  well  as  frolicsome — make  them  accept 
able  to  adults  and  children  alike.  Any 

Louisa  May     ...  .      .  .  .r  , 

Alcott,  luvenile  story,  aiming-  to  be  swift  and 
1833-1888.  ,  11  •  •  i 

cheery  rather  than  artistic,  and  accom 
panied  by  numerous  predecessors  and  successors 
from  the  same  pen,  is  likely  to  be  lost  in  the 
multiplicity  of  the  lesser  books  of  literature  ;  but 
Miss  Alcott's  wholesome  young  New  England 
girls  and  boys  represent  types,  at  least,  which 
will  remain,  in  fact  and  in  fiction,  long  after  her 
essentially  ephemeral  books  are  forgotten.  Miss 
Alcott,  like  Miss  Phelps,  was  not  oblivious  to  the 
deeper  romance  and  shadow  of  American  life, 
which  brightened  or  darkened  the  strong  pages 
of  "  Moods,"  her  first  considerable  novel. 

Another,   deeper,  and    more    artistically  signif 
icant  and  serene  delineation  of  New  England  life 

Thomas  Wentworth  is  made  in  Higginson's  "  Malbone, 
Higginson,  b.  1823.  an  Qldport  Romance."  Here  are 

environment  and  background  fit  for  the  most 
thoughtful  artist  in  prose  fiction  :  the  ancient  sea ; 
a  town  already  venerable  and  courtly,  by  Ameri 
can  standards  ;  a  moist  climate  that  marks  the 
English  complexion  and  restful  temper  upon  the 
faces  of  the  young  American  residents ;  and  a 
modern,  sensational,  fashionable  life  surging 


Later  Movements  in  American  Fiction.     419 

around  the  slowly-moved  landmarks  of  the  chief 
of  our  watering-places.  Here  Higginson  viewed 
life  and  put  some  part  of  its  vital  blood  into  a 
book  of  quiet  literary  strength,  of  romantic  action, 
of  lambent  humor,  and  (in  its  capitally-drawn 
character  of  Aunt  Jane)  of  fidelity  to  that  shrewd 
and  indigenous  New  Englandism  described  else 
where  by  Mrs.  Stowe  or  Miss  Phelps.  "  Mai- 
bone  "  is  an  Emersonian  novel  in  its  view  of  inani 
mate  nature  as  mirror  and  monitor  of  human 
nature, — the  eternal  theme  of  romancer  and  poet. 
I  have  been  considering  some  novelists  and 
story-tellers  of  New  England.  In  the  two  books 
of  Mr.  Philander  Deming,  one  of  the  least  sen 
sational  but  one  of  the  most  praiseworthy  of 
recent  writers,  the  scenes  are  laid  in  the  Adiron 
dack  region  of  Northern  New  York,  or  in  the 
neighboring  cities  of  Albany  and  Burlington. 
In  Mr.  Deming's  work  the  form  is  something  like 
that  of  Mr.  James'  stories,  but  the  Philander  Dem. 
spirit  is  the  author's  own.  In  "  Lida  ing,b.  1829. 
Ann,"  or  "Tompkins,"  for  instance,  Mr.  Deming 
shows  that  he  possesses  the  double  power  of 
describing  details  minutely,  and  of  delineating  the 
life  behind  the  details.  By  little  touches  we  are 
made  to  see  character  and  scenery;  and  we  are 
also  shown,  in  deeper  tints,  the  kind  of  existence 
led  by  the  personages  of  the  tales.  Their  works 
and  ways  are  humble,  like  the  grim  and  mean  but 
pathetically  human  love-making  in  Mary  E.  Wil- 
kins'  somewhat  similar  Vermont  story  called  "A 
Humble  Romance."  But  the  essential  spirit  of 


420  American  Literature. 

the  better  fiction  is  never  lost.  In  "  Lida  Ann  "  a 
commonplace  little  Adirondack  girl  marries  a 
coarse,  "  emotional,"  and  pretentious  revivalist ; 
then  she  runs  away  with  a  "  Spiritualist"  humbug; 
but  at  last  come  the  real  regeneration  of  the 
revivalist  by  the  gospel  of  hard  work  and 
modest  self-sacrifice,  and  the  return  of  the  foolish 
wanderer  to  a  respectable  life.  In  "  Tompkins  " 
is  merely  the  life-story  of  a  Vermont  girl  who 
silently  supports  an  unsuspecting  loved  one  in  his 
college  course,  and  who  goes  to  her  grave  before 
he  learns  the  secret.  Yet  these  "simple  stories," 
in  very  truth,  are  told  with  such  art,  with  such 
fidelity  to  petty  detail  and  to  high  purpose,  that 
they  cannot  be  omitted  in  any  estimate  of  our 
later  fiction.  They  portray  in  clear  lines  and  firm 
tints  the  plain  or  rude  American  country  life  from 
which  come  the  very  bone  and  sinew  of  the  nation. 
Rectitude  and  hope  lie  behind  the  simplest  Ameri 
can  society;  a  rectitude  based  on  an  essentially 
noble  self-reliance,  and  a  hope  that  may  lack 
refinement  or  intelligence  but  not  spiritual 
strength.  Even  in  the  Adirondack  wilderness 
is  a  viewr  of  life  that  forms  a  striking  contrast 
to  the  pale  pessimistic  woe  of  the  Russian  coun 
trymen  of  similar  social  grade,  as  shown  by  such 
local  masters  as  Tourgueneff  or  Tolstoi. 

The  most  successful  pictures  of  American  char 
acters  and  characteristic  scenes,  whether  chosen 
from  the  east  or  the  west,  from  city  or  from  coun 
try,  have  unquestionably  been  presented  in  such 
short  stones  as  those  of  Miss  Jewett,  Mrs.  Cooke, 


Later  Movements  in  American  Fiction.     421 

Miss  Phelps,  or  Mr.  Deming,  rather  than  in  long 
novels.  Bret  Harte  is  distinctly  at  his  best  in  his 
brief  stories  and  sketches,  and  at  his  worst  in  his 
larger  books;  Mr.  Cable's  "The  Grandissimes " 
and  "  Doctor  Sevier  "  are,  at  best,  no  more  than 
equal  to  the  separated  studies  of  "  Old  Creole 
Days";  while  Miss  Murfree  ("  Charles  Egbert 
Craddock  "),  an  apparent  exception,  writes  novel 
ettes,  or  long-short  stories,  rather  than  novels. 
Others  of  the  newer  and  younger  Southern  writ 
ers  are  sketchers,  not  romancers  ;  and  as  we  look 
at  the  whole  field  of  the  new  American  fiction  we 
note  excellence  in  the  small,  rather  than  any 
largeness  of  creative  ability.  But  a  short  story, 
like  a  short  poem,  is  as  legitimate  as  a  long  one  ; 
and  if  our  large  and  fine  new  creations  in  fiction 
are  few  indeed,  at  least  we  escape  thereby  the 
weariness  of  prolixity.  The  explanation  is  not 
far  to  seek  :  our  broad  and  varied  national  life, 
from  the  Maine  ship-builders  to  the  Louisiana 
Creoles,  from  Miss  Woolson's  lake  country  to 
Miss  Murfree's  Tennessee  mountains  or  Bret 
Harte's  mines  and  gulches,  affords  as  yet  so 
abundant  material  for  description  that  the  liter 
ary  painters  naturally  multiply  portraits,  and  little 
groups  of  figures,  &n,&  genre  pictures,  rather  than 
inclusive  or  ideal  scenes.  One  such  sketch  as 
"  Peter  the  Parson,"  in  Miss  Wool- 

Constance  Feni- 

son's  "  Castle  Nowhere:   Lake  Coun-    more  Wooison, 
try  Sketches,"  is  so  true  and  therefore 
so  valuable  that  I  care  not  if  the  author's  ambi 
tious  books,  "Anne"  and  "  East  Angels,"  despite 


422  American  Literature. 

manifest  touches  of  a  strong  hand,  seem  alto 
gether  unimportant  in  comparison.  In  "  Peter 
the  Parson  "  we  have  the  cold,  raw,  scantling-and- 
boards  life  of  a  hateful  little  Philistine  settlement 
in  Michigan  ;  but  we  have  also  high  if  mistaken 
religious  devotion,  the  half-hopes  and  crushed 
possibilities  of  a  real  love,  and  a  supreme  self- 
sacrifice  like  that  which  lies  at  the  very  heart  of 
Christianity — and  that  is  enough. 

A  little  farther  westward  lie  the  scenes  of 
Edward  Eggies-  Edward  Eggleston's  tales  of  pioneer 
ton,  b.  1837.  iife  jn  tne  "  new  west  "  of  1840.  The 
author  was  able  to  put  into  his  books  sights  and 
experiences  of  which  his  own  life  had  taught  him. 
As  an  itinerant  preacher  among  the  Methodists, 
and  later  as  a  Sunday-school  worker,  he  well 
learned  of  the  shifting  borderland  between  civ 
ilization  and  barbarism ;  and  his  novels  tell  us 
truly  of  the  life  lived  at  the  outposts,  in  log  cab 
ins  built  on  virgin  soil.  The  very  titles  of  his 
works — "  The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster,"  "  The  Cir 
cuit  Rider,"  "The  Mystery  of  Metropolisville," 
"Roxy" — illuminate  the  scenes  and  characters 
described.  The  scenes  are  rough  and  the  charac 
ters  "  tough,"  in  the  better  sense  and  sometimes 
in  the  worse  ;  but  the  fidelity  with  which  youth 
and  age  in  the  backwoods  are  painted  makes  the 
books,  like  so  many  other  American  works,  at 
least  valuable  essays  toward  that  full  delineation 
of  the  whole  country  which  our  novelists  seem 
surely,  though  irregularly,  to  be  making.  Amer 
ica  includes  many  a  "  Metropolisville,"  as  well 


Later  Movements  in  American  Fiction.    423 

as  Boston  or  New  York.  Eggleston's  western 
stories  present  passing  phases  of  a  life-character 
that  is  in  itself  permanent.  Thin  and  poor  as 
that  life  may  be  in  externals,  it  is  even  opulent  in 
courage,  cheer,  and  manly  helpfulness.  The  men 
and  women  of  these  Hoosier  tales  may  live  in 
bark-covered  log  houses,  but  their  hearts  are  full 
of  true  blood  and  their  sinews  are  of  steel.  It  is 
fortunate  that  they  found  a  chronicler  who  under 
stands  the  true  relation  of  fiction  to  the  study  of 
life. 

^  With  a  humor  less  spontaneous  but  neater  and 
more  deliberate  than  Eggleston's,  Bret  Harte  has 
made  the  early  Californians,  good  and  Francis  Bret 
bad,  known  throughout  the  world  of  Harte,  b.  1839. 
readers.  An  evident  disciple  of  Dickens,  he  joins  * 
wit  and  pathos  in  that  union  which  has  ever 
marked  their  near  kinship  in  English  fiction. 
Some  of  his  tales  almost  seem  the  apotheosis  of 
mere  grit  and  friendship,  at  the  expense  of  all 
other  moral  qualities ;  they  are  full  of  sentiment, 
but  so  far  removed  from  sentimentality  that  they 
appear  to  revel  in  coarseness  and  general  badness, 
only  caring  that  they  laud  devotion  and  self-sac 
rifice,  courage  and  rude  tenderness,  and  scarify 
treachery  and  hypocrisy.  Mr.  Harte  can  give  the  • 
best  of  reasons  for  this  nature  of  his  stories :  it 
was  and  is  the  real  nature  of  the  characters  de 
scribed.  If  his  realism  brings  very  near  us  such 
things  as  gamblers,  prostitutes,  robbers,  "  specula 
tors,"  pistols,  knives,  cards  and  dice,  it  does 
not  forget  the  community  of  human  nature,  and 


424  American  Literature. 

the  higher  moods  and  tenderer  impulses  of  hearts 
covered  by  rough  flannel  or  tawdry  finery.  Bret 
Harte's  best  stories — usually  the  shorter  ones, 
such  as  "  The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp,"  "  The 
Outcasts  of  Poker  Flat,"  "  How  Santa  Glaus 
came  to  Simpson's  Bar,"  "  An  Apostle  of  the 
Tules,"  or  "  A  Ship  of  '49,"  set  forth  with  large 
truth  and  with  accuracy  of  detail  certain  passing 
episodes  in  America.  The  life  they  portray  with 
kindly  and  swift  humor,  with  grim  impartiality, 
and  sometimes  with  a  coarseness  not  essential,  is 
genuine  ;  it  is  a  life  which  is  apparently  brazenly 
selfish  in  the  struggle  for  existence  or  gain,  but  is, 
after  all,  deeply  stirred  by  generous  instincts  and 
helpful  humanity.  Bret  Harte's  sharpers  or 
miners  of  the  far  West,  his  owners  of  ranches, 
rough  pioneer  farmers,  and  rude,  uncultured 
women,  are  for  the  most  part  united  in  favor  of 
sincerity  and  "  bed-rock  "  honesty,  traits  which  are 
by  no  means  least  common  in  the  slums  of  New 
York  or  the  gulches  of  California.  The  life  of 
his  stories,  miserably  limited  as  it  may  be  in 
breadth  and  wealth  of  opportunity,  is  yet  a  full 
and  rich  life  in  those  things  which  most  make 
existence  desirable  and  progress  possible.  Its 
Americanism  is  genuine  ;  that  of  the  national  or 
quaintly  local  earth  and  sky,  but  also  of  universal 
man  shown  in  new  scenes  and  phases.  Harte's 
wit  has  greatly  helped  his  rise  in  public  favor,— 
the  wit  which  tells  us  how  suddenly  the  rascally 
gambler,  outwitted  by  the  "  heathen  Chinee,"  dis 
covered  that  "we  are  ruined  by  Chinese  cheap 


Later  Movements  in  American  Fiction.     425 

labor."  But  the  wit  of  "  Plain  Language  from 
Truthful  James,"  or  the  pathos  of  others  of 
Harte's  poems,  finds  a  better  expression  in  his 
prose  idyls  of  the  land  of  rough  ore,  and  is  chiefly 
to  be  valued  not  for  its  own  sake,  but  as  an  aid  to 
the  presentation  of  interesting  and  actual  types  of 
unfamiliar  character.  The  presentation  is  irregu 
lar,  often  hurried  or  weak,  and  not  more  than 
once  or  twice  marked  by  the  highest  art ;  but,  in  / 
the  author's  own  words,  it  is  "quite  content  to 
have  collected  merely  the  materials  for  the  Iliad 
that  is  yet  to  be  sung." 

After  the  end  of  the  civil  war  and  the  violent 
death  of  slavery,  there  appeared  in  several  of  the 
Southern  States  a  self-reliant  literary  spirit,— 
shown  especially  by  many  young  story-tellers  and 
poets  whose  fame  is  still  unknown, — and  a  habit 
of  faithful  portrayal  of  men  and  things  close  at 
hand  that  promise  much  for  the  future  of  Ameri 
can  fiction.  Southern  provincialism  before  the 
war,  though  intensely  local  in  its  pride,  was  self- 
complacent,  and  not  sufficiently  keen-eyed  to  see 
that  provincial  types  and  scenes,  accurately  and 
impartially  presented,  may  be  made  contributions 
to  national  or  even  universal  literature.  Instead 
of  mere  pride  in  the  soil  has  come  a  living  interest 
in  the  characteristics  and  products  of  the  soil ;  in 
place  of  a  somewhat  artificial  and  perfunctory 
praise  of  Southern  writers,  we  now  have  a  spon 
taneous  and  hearty  recognition  of  the  inherent 
merit  of  their  writings.  The  old  temper  might 
have  expressed  itself  in  the  words  :  "  It  must  be 


426  American  Literature. 

good  because  it  is  Southern  "  ;  the  new  says :  "  It 
is  good,  and  it  is  also  Southern."  *  Like  Bret 
Harte,  Miss  Murfree  and  Mr.  Cable  rely  for  suc 
cess  upon  the  fidelity  with  which  localism  is  given 
a  universal  interest.  To  sight  they  add  insight  ; 
and  their  painstakingly  minute  touches  are 
directed  by  a  knowledge  of  humanity  beneath 
eccentricity.  In  presenting  "  The  Prophet  of  the 
Great  Smoky  Mountains  "  of  Tennessee,  and  the 
rude  folk  to  whom  he  preached,  Miss  Murfree 
adds  to  description  that  ideal  or  imaginative 
Mary  Noaiiies  power  which,  while  sacrificing  no 

EgbSfcL^1*  Jot  of  truth>  sees  the  soul  through 
dock"),  b.  is—  flesn  anc[  bones,  and  discerns  the 

meaning  of  life,  however  sordid  or  coarse  it  appar 
ently  is.  The  mighty  mountains,  and  deep 
gorges,  and  overshadowing  trees  in  her  books,  as 
in  Bret  Harte's  California  stories,  at  first  seem  to 
dwarf  the  vulgar  men  and  women  who  crawl  about 
them ;  but  Miss  Murfree's  Prophet,  and  Harte's 
Apostle  of  the  Tules,  and  Miss  Woolson's  Peter 
the  Parson  are  yet  able  to  rise  to  a  Sidney  Carton 
height  of  self-sacrifice  for  others.  The  externally 
hateful  and  wicked  and  mean,  in  our  worst  Amer 
ican  life,  is  yet  instinct  with  the  higher  optimism ; 
for 

*  An  able,  unquestionable,  and  admirably  concise  and  strong  expression 
of  the  true  Southern  attitude  toward  American  literature  is  made  by  a  very 
competent  authority,  in  a  personal  letter  to  me  from  which  I  am  permitted 
to  quote.  Colonel  J.  Lewis  Peyton,  of  Steephill-by-Staunton,  Virginia,  is 
peculiarly  qualified  to  speak  on  this  subject, — by  descent,  by  remarkably 
extended  family  connections  with  the  great  men  of  the  South,  by  important 
services  to  the  Confederate  States  when  their  representative  in  England^ 
and  by  his  own  relation  to  literary  work.  He  writes :  "In  the  South  (as 


Later  Movements  in  American  Fiction.     427 

"It  is  not  only  in  the  rose, 
It  is  not  only  in  the  bird, 
Not  only  where  the  rainbow  glows, 
Nor  in  the  song  of  woman  heard, 
But  in  the  darkest,  meanest  things, 
There  alway,  alway,  something  sings." 

The  tone  and  color  may  be  strange,  and  certainly 
are  presented  with  grim  accuracy  ;  if  the  moral 
appears,  it  is  not  because  these  writers  preach, 
but  because  human  life  preaches,  however  unwel 
come  to  finical  critics  its  sermon  may  be. 

The  new  Southern  writers  have  much  to  do  and 
much  to  learn.  They  have  not,  as  yet,  begun  to 
exhaust  a  rich  store.  Before  the  war  was  the 
ancien  regime,  picturesque  and  peculiar;  then 
came  the  storm  and  stress  of  a  conflict  that 
burned  the  South — far  more  than  the  North — 
with  searing  flame  ;  now  rises  the  new  South,  a 
patriotic  part  of  the  common  country.  The  field 
for  fiction,  whether  romantic  or  realistic,  broad 
novel  or  narrow  sketch,  is  wide,  and  seems  reason 
ably  sure  of  cultivation.  If  the  large  mind  and 
large  manner  are  not  apparent  as  yet,  the  same  is 
true  in  the  case  of  the  writers  of  the  West.  By 
and  by  the  masters  will  come,  here  one  and  there 
another,  it  may  be  at  long  intervals ;  for  not 

with  you)  nobody  now  thinks  of  the  birthplace  of  an  American  writer;  we 
only  wish  to  know  what  he  has  turned  a  sheet  of  white  paper  into,  with  pen 
and  ink.  And  I  hardly  think  any  but  a  man  of  diseased  mind  and  imagina 
tion,  like  Poe,  would  ever  have  uttered  such  sentiments  as  he  did  as  to 
Edward  Coate  Pinkney.  The  enlightened  men  of  this  region,  as  of  yours, 
know  no  North  or  South  in  literature — only  one  grand  Republic  of  Letters, 
in  which  every  man  standeth  according  to  the  soundness  of  his  heart  and 
the  strength  of  his  understanding." 


428  American  Literature. 

often,  at  the  North  or  anywhere,  appears  an 
author  deserving  to  be  called  great.  The  localism 
of  a  narrow  field  does  not  in  itself,  of  course,  pre 
vent  a  book  or  an  author  from  attaining  greatness 
or  showing  the  large  manner.  The  single  name 
of  Hawthorne  is  enough  to  prove  that  high  genius 
may  cultivate  the  narrowest  field  with  noble  liter 
ary  results,  and  that  the  ablest  mind  finds  and 
almost  makes  its  locale  in  New  England  or  Old, 
beneath  the  shades  of  Puritanism  or  of  Roman 
ism.* 

Mrs.  Frances  Hodgson  Burnett,  a  writer  of 
English  birth  but  of  Southern  residence,  has 
shown  how  mental  character  and  literary  prefer 
ence  choose  their  field,  and  how  the  author's 
thought  may  profitably  revert  to  old  scenes  or 
distant  types.  Her  bright  and  fresh  little  love 
stories  are  as  unimportant  as  they  are  numerous, 
and  her  portrayals  of  certain  Southern 

Frances  Eliza  * 

(Hodgson)  characters  and  life-phases  are  enter- 
Burnett,  D.  1849.  •  •  i  .  r 

taming  but   not  significant,  with  the 
exception    of   occasional    portraitures    of    self-re- 

*  "Literature  as  a  profession  has  until  quite  recently  found  but  few  fol 
lowers  in  the  South The  institutions  and  traditions  of  Southern  life 

were  unfavorable,  if  not  openly  antagonistic,  to  the  establishment  of  the 
literary  profession.  The  leisurely  and  cultivated,  among  whom  literary  pro 
ductiveness  would  most  naturally  have  its  rise,  preferred,  as  their  fathers 
had  preferred,  the  career  of  the  statesman,  and  its  honors  were  their  ambi 
tion,  to  the  attainment  of  which  the  legal  profession  was  the  natural  step 
ping-stone.  The  art  of  expressing  thought  on  paper  they  regarded  as  an 
elegant  accomplishment,  to  be  cultivated  as  a  gentleman's  recreation,  not 
the  serious  business  of  his  life,  for  which  he  was  to  receive  remuneration. 
That  they  were  a  race  of  polished  letter-writers  family  archives  conclusively 
prove ;  and  able  essays  on  political  subjects  not  infrequently  came  from 
their  pens.  Thus  there  were  men  who  did  literary  work,  and  good  work 


Later  Movements  in  American  Fiction.     429 

liant  girls  like  Esmeralda  or  Louisiana.  Such  bla 
tant  and  let  us  hope  passing  types  as  the  Ameri 
can  young  woman  whom  Mrs.  Burnett  calls  '*  A 
Fair  Barbarian "  may  entertain  an  hour ; 
better  than  a  hundred  sucn  studies  is  her  picture 
of  "  That  Lass  o'  Lowrie's,"  and  life  in  the  Lan 
cashire  mines  of  England ;  or  the  unmitigated 
pathos  which  we  are  made  to  share  in  "  Surly 
Tim's  Troubles,"  a  sketch  of  transatlantic  grief 
that  appeals  to  the  worldwide  heart. 

The  renaissance  of  literature  in  the  South  has 
produced  no  more  interesting  result  than  George 
W.  Cable's  tales  of  picturesque  Louisianian  life. 
A  keen  observer  and  a  fearless  painter — for  fear 
lessness  is  needed  if  one  would  faithfully  depict 
the  life  of  a  sensitive  folk — Cable  is  also  a  fine 
artist  in  his  touch  and  at  the  same  time  a  whole 
some  moralist.  New  Orleans  and  Louisiana,  far 
and  unfamiliar,  half  French  and  there- 

(jreorge 

fore   half   foreign,  a  later  addition    to      Washington 
the  territory  of  the  United  States,  both 
rich    and    poor,    chastened    but    not    humbled    or 
crushed  by  the  civil  war — what  better  scene  could 

too,  to  whom  the  writing  of  books  was  neither  the  prime  aim  in  life  nor  yet 

purely  a  pastime Simms  made  the  prophesy  that  there  would  never 

be  a  Southern  literature  worthy  of  the  name  under  a  slave-holding  aristoc 
racy.  Social  conditions  were  against  it.  When  the  result  of  the  war 
brought  about  a  new  state  of  affairs,  and  the  people  of  the  South,  at  first 
stunned  by  the  mightiness  of  the  blow,  went  bravely  to  work  to  meet  the 
demands  of  the  situation,  the  pen,  heretofore  a  political  weapon  or  the  attri 
bute  of  cultured  leisure,  was  soon  made  to  take  its  place  beside  the  plough. 
In  Southern  life  was  presently  perceived  abundant  material,  rich  and  varied, 
possessing  high  literary  value  and  interest.  Letters  as  a  career  found  a 
larger  following." — Charles  Washington  Coleman,  Jr.  (of  Williamsburg, 
Va.)  in  Harper's  Magazine,  May,  1887. 


430  American  Literature. 

a  novelist  find  ?  It  was  Cable's  by  birth  and  resi 
dence,  and  he  made  it  his  anew  by  the  larger  pur 
pose  and  the  lesser  art  of  his  books.  Here  are 
the  romantic  and  the  picturesque  in  theme,  and 
the  dainty  and  welcome  in  treatment.  "  Old 
Creole  Days"  and  "  Madame  Delphine"  happily 
illustrate  that  union  of  local  and  limited  study  with 
unconsciously  large  and  free  presentation  which  is 
a  mark  of  true  literature  ;  and  these  best  of  his 
books,  as  well  as  the  longer  romantic  novels  called 
"The  Grandissimes "  and  "  Doctor  Sevier,"  view 
the  ideal  sky  through  the  lower  atmosphere  of 
the  real.  Post  nubila  lux  :  here  humor  and  pathos 
and  tender  humanity  do  not  long  leave  tragedy  in 
unmitigated  gloom,  nor  is  the  riddle  of  existence 
without  some  suggested  answer.  Whether  these 
delicate  books  will  live  I  do  not  know;  but  it  is 
certain  that  few  recent  American  novelists  have 
shown  so  uniform  an  average  of  attainment  in 
thought  and  art,  or  have  thrown  upon  the  quaintly 
real  such  new  tints  of  ideal  light. 

What  is  to  be  understood  by  the  term  "  real 
istic,"  as  applied  to  the  method  of  some  later 
American  writers  of  fiction  ?  Defoe  was  an  early 
realist ;  he  so  clothed  fiction  in  the  garb  of  truth, 
in  his  "  Robinson  Crusoe,"  "  Strange  Apparition 
of  Mrs.  Veal,"  and  other  writings,  as  to  deceive 
the  very  elect,  and  to  interest  the  reading  public 
as  few  writers  have  ever  done.  Fielding,  too,  was 
a  realist,  in  that  he  described  low  life  as  he  saw  it, 
and  turned  his  back  upon  the  academic  traditions 
of  his  time.  Goldsmith,  in  prose  and  verse, 


Later  Movements  in  American  Fiction.    431 

painted  certain  classes  of  English  and  Irish  soci 
ety  in  real  colors.  Even  Scott,  with  all  his  senti 
ment  and  romanticism  and  old-fashioned  Toryism, 
cannot  be  called  untrue  to  the  soul  of  humanity, 
or  unable  to  see  and  describe  life  in  a  real  world. 
Dickens  walked  and  talked  with  the  London 
poor,  familiarized  himself  with  suburban  and  rural 
English  life  in  many  grades,  and  at  least  thought 
he  described  Americans  as  he  had  seen  them. 
Thackeray  mirrored  certain  parts  of  British  soci 
ety,  and  portrayed  its  shams  and  foibles,  as  well 
as  the  hearts  of  some  true  women  and  men,  with 
out  essential  exaggeration.  Charlotte  and  Emily 
Bronte  in  Yorkshire,  Blackmore  in  Devon  and 
Somerset,  George  Eliot  in  rural  England,  may  in 
justice  be  called  realists,  whatever  their  differences 
of  method  and  style.  Yet  none  of  them  would 
come  under  the  application  of  the  term  as  nowa 
days  employed.  It  was  their  aim  to  be  true  ;  but 
they  differed  from  the  present  transient  school  of 
"realists"-— led  at  a  distance  by  the  finished  and 
woe-begone  Tourgueneff  and  the  strong  and 
individual  Tolstoi — because  they  gave  a  greater 
place  to  sentiment,  even  though  most  of  them 
shunned  sentimentality. 

What,  then,  is  modern  American  realism  ?  To 
attempt  to  define  it  may  be  easier  than  to  define 
poetry  or  beauty,  but  it  is  not  easy.  For  the  pur 
pose  of  the  present  study  it  may  be  sufficient  to 
say  that  it  stands  without,  not  within  ;  gives  no 
evidence  of  personal  sympathy  ;  seldom  indulges 
in  reflections  upon  the  narrative  it  offers  ;  leaves 


43 2  American  Literature. 

the  reader  to  draw  his  own  conclusions  concerning 
right,  wrong,  progress,  and  remedy  ;  describes  by 
implication  or  by  a  minute  rather  than  large 
characterization  ;  is  fond  of  detail ;  devotes  itself 
chiefly  to  a  limited  and  uninteresting  set  of  toler 
ably  intelligent  people  ;  makes  much  of  transcon 
tinental  travel  or  international  episodes  and  social 
exchanges  ;  insists  constantly  upon  the  duty  of 
portraying  life  as  it  is  ;  and  yet  omits  many  of  the 
most  important  factors  in  life's  problem.  It  has 
been  the  most  conspicuous,  though  not  the  most 
important,  the  most  discussed,  though  by  no  means 
the  most  read,  division  or  development  of  later 
Henry  James,  American  fiction ;  and  its  leader  has 
been  Mr.  Henry  James.  This  quiet 
innovator,  without  self-assertion  or  the  use  of 
adventitious  aids  to  success,  has  at  least  entitled 
himself  to  a  place  in  the  limited  list  of  those  who 
have  been  influences  in  American  literature.  I 
remember  reading,  from  the  pen  of  some  anony 
mous  English  critic,  the  statement  that  "  Amer 
ican  novelists  almost  give  us  (the  English)  lessons 
in  careful  elaboration  of  style,  in  reticence,  and 
well-calculated  effects."  If  this  be  true,  the  com 
pliment — or  rather  its  first  two  parts — belongs  in 
some  measure  to  a  writer  sometimes  distinguished 
for  careful  elaboration  of  style  and  always  for  reti 
cence,  whatever  his  verbosity  ; — '*  the  refraining 
to  speak  of  that  which  is  suggested." 

Mr.  James  did  not  adopt  at  first  the  construc 
tive  method  by  which  he  is  best  known.  The 
New  York  magazine  called  The  Galaxy,  now 


Later  Movements  in  American  Fiction,     433 

dead,  used  to  be  his  common  vehicle  of  communi 
cation.  Its  earlier  volumes  contained  many  sto 
ries  from  his  pen,  which  differed  from  the  usual 
magazine  work  not  so  much  in  plot  and  in  larger 
elaboration  as  in  a  certain  neatness  of  finish  and 
lack  of  intrusion  on  the  writer's  part.  Some  of 
his  earlier  work,  printed  in  this  or  other  maga 
zines,  has  been  abandoned  by  the  author,  but 
several  stories  are  preserved  in  book  form.  In 
these,  though  the  external  style  is  sufficiently 
calm  and  cold,  is  an  element  which  forbids  them 
to  be  classified  with  Mr.  James'  later  productions. 
There  is  more  than  a  touch  of  romance  in  "A 
Passionate  Pilgrim"  ;  "  The  Last  of  the  Valerii " 
is  an  essay  toward  the  Hawthorne  manner — with 
the  usual  result;  "  The  Madonna  of  the  Future" 
is  an  essentially  humanitarian  tale ;  and  "  The 
Romance  of  Certain  Old  Clothes "  is  distinctly 
sensational.  The  prevalent  note  of  the  stories  in 
Mr.  James'  first  collection  was  not  that  of  the 
realism  now  connected  with  his  name.  His  ear 
lier  criticisms  and  descriptions  of  travel  showed 
more  of  his  later  method  than  did  his  short 
stories.  The  influences  of  travel,  of  cosmopolitan 
culture,  and  of  his  instinctive  calmness  of  mind, 
served  to  develop  his  final  ma^ 
manner.  He  needed  no  ars  est  celare  artem 
motto,  he  simply  followed  his  bent ;  and  the 
soberer  years  of  manhood  naturally  turned  him 
from  his  essays  toward  the  sensational  and  the  ro 
mantic,  though  he  never  quite  lost  his  humani 
tarian  element,  to  which  he  occasionally  yields. 
28 


434  American  Literature. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  pass  through  the  tolerably 
well-known  list  of  Mr.  James'  books,  reviewing 
each  in  minute  detail.  They  are  rather  weari 
somely  numerous,  and  some  of  them,  written 
after  the  first,  show  a  lack  of  that  literary  finish 
which  is  supposed  to  be  connected  with  his  name. 
Of  all  his  books  "  The  Bostonians "  is  the  best  I 
illustrative  type  :  long,  dull,  and  inconsequential, 
but  mildly  pleasing  the  reader,  or  at  times  quite 
delighting  him,  by  a  deliberate  style  which  is 
enjoyable  for  its  own  sake,  by  a  calm  portraiture 
which  represents  the  characters  with  silhouette- 
clearness,  and  by  some  very  faithful  and  deli 
cately  humorous  pictures  of  the  life  and  scenery 
of  Eastern  Massachusetts.  Its  method  is  some-  , 
what  dreary  and  narrow,  but  is  in  its  way  suffi 
ciently  admirable. 

Mr.  James  has  three  "  manners":  "The  Pas 
sionate  Pilgrim  "  book  represents  one  ;  "  Daisy 
Miller"  the  second;  and  "The  Bostonians"  the 
third.  In  "Daisy  Miller"  Mr.  James  depicts  a 
characteristic  American  girl,  from  his  own  point 
of  view.  The  picture  is  unattractive  to  those 
who,  recognizing  Daisy  as  a  "  type,"  refuse  to 
regard  her  as  a  more  prominent  or  representative 
type  than  Mr.  Howells'  "Lady  of  the  Aroos- 
took,"  Miss  Jewett's  "  Country  Doctor,"  or  Mrs. 
Burnett's  "  Louisiana,"  to  select  three  young 
women  of  equal  self-reliance  but  greater  sense. 
The  novelette  aroused,  perhaps,  a  needless  atten 
tion,  since  the  author's  method  evidently  was 
impartial,  in  his  own  view,  and  since  he  gave  his 


Later  Movements  in  American  Fiction.    435 

little  heroine  some  attractive  qualities,  which  may 
well  enough  be  recommended  for  European  imi 
tation.  The  defect  which  the  reader  feels  in 
this  booklet,  as  in  so  much  of  Mr.  James'  work, 
does  not  relate  to  what  is  said,  but  rather  to  the 
author's  apparent  lack  of  heart  or  human  inter 
est  in  the  matter.  We  may  call  Mr.  James  a 
faultless  photographer,  in  the  "  Daisy  Miller" 
class  of  his  stones,  but  not  an  artist.  He  is,  at 
best,  a  French  painter  in  fiction,  not  a  master  in 
the  older  and  larger  and  better  manner.  He  has 
deliberately  chosen  his  plan,  and  must  pay  the 
penalty  while  he  receives  the  reward. 

In  his  longer  "international  "-—or,  as  they  have 
been  cleverly  called,  e'migre' — novels  we  recognize 
more  clearly  the  artistic  touch.  "  Roderick  Hud 
son  "  and  "  The  Portrait  of  a  Lady  "  are  the  best 
of  his  longer  stories,  and  "  Confidence "  is  the 
poorest,  but  all  are  constructed  on  the  same 
scheme, — the  scheme  first  fully  elaborated  in  his 
novelette  of "  Watch  and  Ward,"  published  in 
1872.  Behind  all  his  books  stands  the  author, 
never  more  visible  than  the  live  man  in  Maelzel's 
automaton  chess-player.  There  passes  before 
him  a  procession  of  people  ;  he  notes  and  chroni 
cles  their  characteristics,  and  he  tells  some  of  the 
things  they  say  and  do,  with  fewer  of  the  things 
they  think.  These  personages,  men  and  women, 
are  not  knights,  Pathfinders,  dark  mysterious  vil 
lains,  dazzling  beauties,  or  damsels  forlorn,  sub 
jected  to  plot  and  intrigue  ;  nor  are  they  melo 
dramatic  creatures  of  the  Nancy  Sykes  order. 


436  American  Literature. 

Mr.  James  describes  commonplace  people  of  the 
better  kind ;  and  though  they  feel,  and  act,  and  are 
acted  upon,  their  environment  is  irreproachable. 
Seldom  does  he  seem  to  be  working  toward  a 
definite  result  in  his  books,  though  most  of  them 
have  what  may  in  a  sense  be  called  a  moral.  A 
part  of  the  outside  of  the  complex  life  of  the  last 
quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  his  theme  ; 
he  delineates  it,  and  he  analyzes  and  sub-analyzes  ; 
but  that  is  all.  If  it  be  true  that  he  is  preemi 
nently  the  American  novelist  who  represents 
"  life "  and  reality,  without  artificial  idealism  in 
adornment,  then  life  nowadays  is  a  sadly  shrunken 
and  shrivelled  thing,  cold,  thin  and  incomplete. 

Later  American  prose  has  been  distinctly  broad 
ened  and  enriched  by  the  work  of  William  Dean 
wniiam  Dean  Howells.  Of  Ohio  birth,  and  thor- 
Howeiis,  b.  1837.  OUghly  American  in  his  fresh,  self- 
reliant,  alert,  observant,  and  optimistic  tone  of 
mind,  Howells  has  strengthened  his  natural 
powers  by  a  wise  assimilation  of  the  results  of 
study,  travel,  and  European  residence.  In  his 
broad  field  of  work  he  has  shown  his  ready  accept 
ance  of  the  national  necessity — or  temptation — 
to  do  many  things :  he  has  been  editor,  critic, 
traveller,  comedian,  novelist,  poet,  and  even  (like 
Hawthorne)  a  writer  of  the  "  campaign  biogra 
phies"  called  forth  by  the  demands  of  American 
quadrennial  politics.  But  his  novels,  in  number 
and  importance,  have  overshadowed  his  readable 
biographies  of  Presidents  Lincoln  and  Hayes  ;  his 
incisive,  witty,  or  too  swiftly  laudatory  reviews  of 


Later  Movements  in  American  Fiction.     437 

fiction  and  poetry  in  America,  England,  Italy,  and 
Russia  ;  his  graceful  but  relatively  unimportant 
verse,  dominated  and  saddened  by  the  influence  of 
Heine  ;  and  his  serene  sketches  of  life  in  Italian 
Venice  or  American  Cambridge,  the  scenes  and 
characters  of  which  he  has  illumined  by  the  lam 
bent  light  of  a  humor  which  not  seldom  recalls 
the  pleasure  the  masters  give, 

Howells'  stories  and  novels  are  American  in 
scene,  in  portraiture,  and  in  spirit.  In  "  Their 
Wedding  Journey,"  "  A  Chance  Acquaintance," 
and  "  A  Foregone  Conclusion  "  he  fairly  entitled 
himself,  by  his  freshness,  faithfulness,  and  whole 
some  humor  of  description,  to  be  called  the  most 
successful  literary  painter  of  contemporary  Amer 
ican  life  in  the  better  classes.  His  field  was  some 
what  limited ;  he  did  not  essay  to  treat  of  noble 
tragedy  or  utter  pathos  ;  of  inexorable  necessity 
or  glowing  romance  ;  but  within  that  field  his  suc 
cess  was  manifest  and  his  method  was  his  own. 
After  the  publication  of  ''The  Lady  of  the  Aroos- 
took"(i879)  and  "The  Undiscovered  Country" 
(1880),  the  one  a  fine  portrait  of  a  true  and  wom 
anly  girl  and  the  other  an  interesting  study  of 
some  phases  of  New  England  "  Spiritualism," 
Howells  distinctly  changed  his  manner  and  mani 
festly  fell  under  the  influence  of  Henry  James,  his 
junior  in  years  and  certainly  not  his  superior  in 
ability,  reputation,  or  mastery  of  style.  This 
change  was  clearly  for  the  worse.  Henceforth 
Howells,  though  never  becoming  indifferent  to 
the  deeper  truths  of  life,  was  to  be  ranked  with 


438  American  Literature. 

the  new-realists.  The  stories,  he  said,  had  all 
been  told ;  therefore  he  presented  passionless  and 
elaborately  minute  studies  of  certain  types — char 
acteristic  in  their  way,  but  non-significant — of 
New  England  men  and  women.  With  keenness 
and  clearness  of  vision,  and  with  the  humor  which 
is  a  part  of  his  nature,  he  simply  told  his  readers 
what  he  had  seen  and  heard.  The  telling  would 
have  been  faultless  had  the  subjects  been  repre 
sentative.  By  perpetually  portraying  a  part  of 
life,  and  that  not  the  most  significant,  this  pains 
taking  realist  has  produced  an  unreal  effect. 

Of  the  books  in  Howells'  later  manner  "A 
Modern  Instance"  is  the  strongest ;  it  is  Howells' 
representative  novel,  as  "  The  Bostonians "  is 
James'  masterpiece.  The  men  and  women,  boys 
and  girls,  and  winter  life  and  landscape  of  a  typi 
cal  New  England  village  are  delineated  with  a 
fidelity  that  would  be  perfect  were  it  not  that  the 
heart  and  soul  of  New  England  are  almost  out 
of  sight.  "  A  Modern  Instance,"  placed  beside 
"  The  Biglow  Papers,"  "  Snow-Bound,"  or  "  The 
House  of  the  Seven  Gables  " — all  three  of  them 
minutely  realistic — almost  seems  an  artistic  false 
hood.  Its  separate  elements  are  true,  but  its 
whole  is  misleading.  Howells  returns  again  and 
again  to  the  porch  or  the  heap  of  builders'  debris, 
but  shuts  his  eyes  to  the  skyward  cathedral. 

"What  parts,  what  gems,  what  colors  shine, — 
Ah,  but  I  miss  the  grand  design." 

The  influence  of  the  two  chief  American   real- 


Later  Movements  in  American  Fiction.    439 

ists,  and  of  their  European  prototypes,  has  of 
course  affected  some  of  the  younger  novelists  in 
the  United  States.  Occasionally  one  of  them  has 
devoted  himself  to  realism  pure  and  simple  ;  oth 
ers,  with  a  more  or  less  romantic  motive,  have 
followed  the  general  method  of  cold  and  unimpas- 
sioned  delineation ;  and  still  others  have  only 
employed  the  realists'  international  plan.  On  the 
whole,  however,  the  smaller  American  fiction,  as 
well  as  the  larger,  seeks  to  portray  the  ideal  in 
the  real,  not  the  real  without  the  ideal.  A  finer 
and  truer  art  is  demanded  in  this  attempt.  It 
would  be  a  sorry  day  for  fiction  if  it  turned  its 
back  on  life  and  truth,  in  a  chase  after  mere 
romance  or  invention.  Life  was  field  enough  for 
Shakespeare,  and  ought  to  be  for  nineteenth  cent 
ury  novelists.  But  Shakespeare  did  not  forget 
the  romantic,  the  ideal,  and  even  the  supernatural 
in  his  treatment  of  human  life,  which  was  far 
indeed  from  that  of  Tolstoi  or  Tourgueneff. 
What  is  the  life  that  the  novelist  is  to  describe  ? 
Is  it  action,  movement,  story  ?  or  is  it  existence, 
attitude,  pictorial  representation  ?  Again,  which 
is  the  more  important,  the  thing  told  or  the  way 
of  telling  it  ?  The  former ;  because  all  art  is 
grounded  on  the  necessity  that  the  subject  should 
have  some  reason  for  existence  and  delineation. 
Last  of  all,  what  is  life  itself  ?  The  career  of 
upward-moving  souls,  answers  the  chorus  of  the 
world's  greatest  authors,  in  fiction  as  in  every 
other  department  of  literature.  Man  always  has 
been  and  always  will  be  a  creature  of  ambition, 


44°  American  Literature. 

hope,  love,  enthusiasm,  and  the  idea  of  duty ; 
thus  only,  by  rectitude  and  hope,  can  he  explain 
the  mystery  of  life,  and  look  forward  with  confi 
dence  to  "  the  long  day  of  eternity." 

Midway  between  the  realists  and  the  roman 
ticists  of  later  days  stands  Arthur  Sherburne 
Hardy,  whose  "But  Yet  a  Woman  "  (1883),  like 
the  realistic  novels,  presents  an  effective  con 
trast  to  the  representative  books  of  preceding 
American  fashions  in  fiction,  with  their  dark 
and  sombre  scenes,  their  stirring  melodramatic 
adventures,  their  commonplace  sentimentalism, 
their  gentle  aspirations,  or  their  bursts  of  bit 
ter  tears.  "  But  Yet  a  Woman  "  is  a  characteristic 
novel  that  could  not  have  been  written  save  in 
the  later,  maturer,  and  quieter  days  of  fiction  in 
the  United  States.  Its  characters,  as  usual  in 
the  novels  of  the  day,  are  few,  and  its  tone  is 
almost  quietistic.  Yet  the  lives  and  hearts  it 
brings  before  us  are  far  from  being  those 
superficially  and  hence  imperfectly  presented  in 
the  pages  of  the  ordinary  realistic  and  impassive 
novel.  The  author's  sympathy  is  shown,  and  the 
reader's  sympathy  is  tacitly  asked,  for  things  sig 
nificantly  vital  and  deeply  human.  The  novel 
endeavors  to  be,  in  some  sort,  a  "  criticism  of 
life " ;  indeed,  its  chief  merit  is  to  be  found  in 
the  aphorisms  and  pithy  sayings  with  which  it 
abounds.  It  would  be  the  thoughtful  reader's 
companion,  and  not  merely  his  stimulant  or 
amusement. 

A   further  reaction   from   realism,    in    England 


Later  Movements  in  American  Fiction.     441 

and  America,  has  produced  in  recent  years  a  large 
number  of   stories,  long   and   short,   which    have 
ranged  from  highly-colored  oriental  or  even  Afri 
can    romance    to    sensational    novels    of    intricate 
crime,  clever  detection,  and  ultimate  punishment. 
Of  these  stories  it    may   be  said,  in    Tennyson's 
phrase,  that  "  some  are   pretty  enough,  and  some 
are  poor  indeed."     At  one  extreme,  in  England, 
stands  "  The  Strange  Case  of  Doctor  Jekyll  and 
Mr.    Hyde,"    a    valuable    addition    to    the    select 
division  of  English  fiction  ;  at  the  other,  certain 
improbable,  loosely-constructed,  and  even  ungram- 
matical    romances    not   worth    mention.       But    in 
speaking  of  this  reaction,  let  us  not    forget  that 
"  realism "  has  never  affected  more  than  a  some 
what  limited   minority  of   novel-readers,  in   Eng 
land    or    America.     In    the    former   the    sway    of 
Dickens,  the  prose  poet  and  master-mind,  is  still 
undiminished  ;  in  the  latter,  where  Dickens  is  no 
less  potent,  the  many  have  been  stirred  to  flame 
by  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  or  have  eagerly  bought, 
for   political    reasons,    tens   of   thousands    of   the 
novels  portraying   scenes  in    the  "  reconstruction 
period"  of   the  Southern   States.     Their  highest 
favorite  is  a  writer  who,  beginning  with  a  story 
of   the   great    Chicago    fire    of    1871,  gave   them 
a  long  series  of  tales  in  which  the  humanitarian, 
the  domestic,  and  the  sensational  elements  were 
combined    in   what    proved    to    be    the    desired 
proportion.       Meanwhile    two    hundred    thousand 
copies    of    "  Ben-Hur,    a    Tale    of    the    Christ" 
have    been    distributed    among   pleased    readers, 


44  2  American  Literature. 

to  whom  its  religious  suggestions  and  its  oc 
casionally  vivid  pictures  have  been  most  wel 
come,  though  the  construction  and — to  me  at 
least — dull  literary  style  are  of  the  amateur  rather 
than  the  true  historical  novelist.  "Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin "  will  always  be  a  historical  landmark  in 
American  literature ;  the  literary  future  of  the 
other  books  just  mentioned  is  of  very  insecure 
promise  ;  nor  can  mere  popular  favor,  so  thought 
less  and  so  ephemeral,  be  elevated  into  a  critical 
judgment.  But  it  is  plain  that,  in  America  at 
least,  literary  agnosticism  will  be  received  with  no 
more  favor  than  religious ;  and  that  American 
literature  will  not  chiefly  be  influenced  by  books- 
in  which 

"The  heart  somehow  seems  all  squeezed  out  by  the  mind." 

English  literature  has  long  made  a  clear  dis 
tinction  between  the  story  or  short  talc,  whether 
romantic  or  natural ;  the  novel  or  long  story, 
dealing  with  passions  and  experiences  not  essen 
tially  improbable ;  and  the  romance,  in  which  the 
action  or  the  study  of  character  is  more  ideal, 
imaginary,  unusual,  improbable,  picturesque,  or 
tinged  with  the  supernatural.  Other  languages 
make  a  similar  distinction,  in  varying  methods 
of  nomenclature.  In  American  fiction,  as  else 
where,  the  boundaries  of  the  three  divisions  are 
not  clearly  defined.  Brown's  "novels"  are  essen 
tially  romances ;  there  is  a  romantic  element  in 
Cooper;  and  Poe's  "tales"  are  little  romances. 
But  it  is  plain  enough,  in  the  general  view,  that 


Later  Movements  in  American  Fiction.     443 

Irving  wrote  stories,  Cooper  novels,  and  Poe  and 
Hawthorne  tales  or  romances.  The  conscious 
humor  in  Irving's  stones  minimizes  the  romantic 
element.  In  later  fiction  there  is  of  course  an  obvi 
ous  difference  between  Deming  or  Miss  Murfree 
and  Crawford  or  Julian  Hawthorne.  Through  the 
works  of  Brown,  Judd,  Cooke,  Winthrop,  Cable, 
there  runs  a  glittering  thread  of  romance,  visible 
even,  as  we  have  seen,  in  some  of  the  earlier  work 
of  Henry  James.  Fitz-James  O'Brien,  a  brilliant 
young  Irish  son  of  fortune,  killed  in  the  first  year 
of  the  civil  war,  showed  in  his  remarkable 

story  called  "  The  Diamond  Lens"  how  a      O'Brien, 
,  •   •  i  i    1820-1862. 

minute   realism,  the   most   rigid    art,  and 

a  seemingly  unfettered  imagination  could  combine 
to  produce  a  valuable  and  original  result  within 
no  more  than  thirty  pages.     A  more  thrifty  man- 
of-letters  would  have  elaborated  the  idea  in  a  long 
romance.     But  the  prodigality  of  American  litera 
ture   has  in  it   something   regal  as  well  as  some 
thing  wasteful ;  and  nowhere  has  its  wealth  been 
more  manifest  than  in  the  tales  of  three  of  our 
greater,   and   some   few   of  our  lesser,    writers  of 
fiction.     Occasionally  an  author  of  no  higher  rank 
than   Harriet  Prescott  Spofford,  by  the  very  care 
lessness    of    opulence,    apparently    throws    away 
renown.       Her    earliest    volumes,    "Sir    Rohan's 
Ghost,"  "The  Amber  Gods  and  Other  Stories," 
"  Azarian,"    displayed     to    American    readers    a 
romantic    element   of    unwonted    luxuriance    and 
ostentatious  wealth.     The   stories  in  the  "Amber 
Gods"  volume   in  particular,  were   fairly  resplen- 


444  American  Literature. 

dent  in  color,   rich   in   tone,   and  oriental  in   per 
fume — "  and    all    Arabia    breathes 

Harriet  Elizabeth 

(Prescott)  Spofford,  from  yonder  box.  '  The  Amber 
Gods"  and  •-  Midsummer  and  May" 
are  something  more  than  curiosities  in  American 
literature.  The  author's  later  work  has  not  ful 
filled  her  early  promise  nor  added  to  her  fame  ; 
the  ready  magazine-market  for  common  love-sto 
ries  has  tempted  her  pen  to  easier  toils  and  less 
exhilarating  or  exhausting  mental  states;  it  may 
be  that  the  books  of  her  youth  now  seem  to  their 
writer — as  indeed  they  sometimes  are — altogether 
careless  and  extravagant.  But  the  irregular 
dramatic  fire  of  these  individual  tales  has  not 
burned  itself  away  in  a  quarter  of  a  century ;  and 
there  is  still  a  place — however  far  below  the 
highest  place — in  our  literature  for  "  the  complete 
incarnation  of  light,  full,  bounteous,  overflowing"; 
"  attars  and  extracts  that  snatch  your  soul  off 
your  lips " ;  or  the  "  little  Spanish  masque,  to 
which  kings  and  queens  have  once  listened  in 
courtly  state,  and  which  now  unrolls  its  resplen 
dent  pageant  before  the  eyes  of  Mrs.  Laudersdale, 
translating  her,  as  it  were,  into  another  planet, 
where  familiar  faces  in  pompous  entablature  look 
out  upon  her  from  a  whirl  of  light  and  color,  and 
familiar  voices  utter  stately  sentences  in  some 
honeyed  unknown  tongue."  Not  often  appears  a 
writer  capable  of  describing  the  effect  of  tone- 
color  in  eight  words  like  these  :  "  the  instrument 
seemed  to  diffuse  a  purple  cloud;  "  but  in  fiction 
and  in  life  there  is  in  very  truth 


Later  Movements  in  American  Fiction. 

"A  tone 

Of  some  world  far  from  ours, 
Where  music  and  moonlight  and  feeling 
Are  one." 

The  romantic  tone  occasionally  marks  some 
single  book  among  the  many  boasting  of  no  more 
than  ordinary  success.  From  the  hurried  inter 
national  experiments  of  Francis  Marion  Craw 
ford,  ranging  from  an  unfamiliar  "Mr.  Isaacs"  in 
languid  modern  India  to  an  im-  Francis  Marion 
possible  "American  Politician"  at  Crawford,  b.  1854. 
home,  there  emerges  the  noble  figure  of  "Zoro 
aster,"  surrounded  by  a  Persian  environment  of 
dramatic  scenes.  Here  are  somewhat  of  the 
swift  carelessness  of  mere  romance  and  somewhat 
of  the  effective  force  of  restrained  art.  Another 
writer,  turning  from  pretty  little  unimportant 
village  love-stories  of  New  England,  Blanche  willis 
portrays  in  "  Guenn  "  a  nobly  pa-  Howard> b-  l847 
thetic  picture  of  the  hopeless  love  of  a  Breton  peas 
ant  maiden  for  a  painter  innocently  oblivious  of 
the  life-ruin  he  is  making.  To  the  smaller  novelists 
as  well  as  the  greater  there  sometimes  comes  that 
ideal  vision,  that  clearer  insight,  which  peers  to 
depths  and  heights  of  life  unseen  before.  If  the 
thought  and  the  power  be  those  of  romance,  the 
resulting  life-picture  need  not  be  less  true  because 
less  commonplace  or  familiar. 

Such  life-pictures  are  not  hard  to  find  in  the 
tales,  novels,  and  romances  of  the  younger  Haw 
thorne.  Over  his  broad  field  hang  both  European 
and  American  skies,  but  they  are  not  seldom 


446  American  Literature. 

illumined  by  "the  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or 
land."     Internationalism,  in  his  method, 

Julian  . 

Hawthorne,    is    but    a   convenience  in    the    portrayal 

b.  1846.  ...  .  J 

ot  minor  character ;  it  is  not  a  mere 
matter  of  external  amusement.  "  Analysis "  he 
reserves  for  such  essays  as  those  printed  in 
"Saxon  Studies";  soul  he  deems  a  thing  some 
what  deeper  than  may  be  shown  by  mere  study  of 
attitude  or  lesser  act.  His  studies  in  stories  are 
of  life,  not  of  society ;  and  he  prefers  to  create 
rather  than  to  record.  The  soul  and  its  strug 
gles,  deep  sin  and  grim  inexorable  penalty,  inner 
loveliness  and  spiritual  triumph,  are  his  higher 
themes ;  and  though  he  occasionally  writes  some 
compact  tale  of  mere  crime  and  discovery,  he 
usually  turns  to  subjects  far  more  intricate  and 
psychological.  His  lighter  tales  are  long-re 
moved  from  the  intense  romance  called  "  Sinfire  " 
or  the  original  creation  of  "  Archibald  Malmai- 
son "  ;  yet  even  in  the  former  there  sometimes 
appears  the  romancer's  profound  impression  of  the 
depth  and  half-guessed  meaning  of  the  mystery 
of  life,  and  his  constant  search  for  some  utterance 
of  that  impression. 

The  careless  opulence  of  which  I  have  just 
spoken,  as  a  sign  of  the  strength  and  the  weak 
ness  of  later  American  fiction,  finds  no  better 
illustration  than  in  Julian  Hawthorne's  books. 
They  crowd  upon  each  other  in  their  rapid  appear 
ance  ;  their  construction  and  language  are  too 
often  so  faulty  that  they  almost  seem  wayward  ; 
and  now  and  then  the  figures  are  blurred  upon 


Later  Movements  in  American  Fiction.    447 

the  mental  retina.  "  Archibald  Malmaison " 
seems  to  me  the  most  original  and  the  strong 
est  of  the  author's  books,  a  remarkable  exam 
ple  of  the  romance  pure  and  simple  ;  yet  even 
here,  where  the  elaboration  of  the  peculiar  plot 
demands  the  utmost  nicety,  are  occasional  signs  of 
haste.  Julian  Hawthorne  has  not  yet  applied  to 
fiction  the  constructive  art  and  the  gravely  deco 
rative  detail  which  make  his  "  Nathaniel  Haw 
thorne  and  his  Wife  "  the  best  biography  written 
in  America.  In  "  Sebastian  Strome,"  which  is 
not  unable  to  endure  mention  beside  "  Adam 
Bede,"  of  which  it  is  a  sort  of  unintentional  coun 
terpart,  the  author  shows  his  most  sustained 
strength.  I  prefer,  however,  to  find  in  the  gen 
eral,  rather  than  the  particular,  those  qualities 
which  led  a  living  critic* — a  critic  thoroughly 
familiar  with  the  work  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne 
and  Edgar  Allan  Poe — to  declare  that  Julian 
Hawthorne  "  is  clearly  and  easily  the  first  of  liv 
ing  romancers." 

None  knows  better  than  Mr.  Hawthorne  him 
self  the  perilousness  of  so  confident  a  statement 
as  this.  But  it  is  certain  that  his  published  books 
display  the  originality  and  power  of  genius. 
Their  general  purpose  and  literary  trend,  their 
unswerving  idea,  whatever  their  irregularity  of 
theme  and  merit,  may  fairly  be  summed  up  in 
these  words  from  a  critical  essay  by  Mr.  Haw 
thorne,  written  of  course  without  the  slightest 
autobiographic  intent : 

*  Richard  Henry  Stoddard. 


448  American  Literature. 

The  heterogeneous  mass  of  material  phenomena  is  destitute 
of  order,  proportion  and  purpose,  and  in  their  unregenerate 
state  these  phenomena  are  and  must  remain  unavailable  for  a 
work  of  art.  Only  after  the  mind  of  the  artist  has  impressed 
its  form  upon  them,  moulding  them  to  its  image,  choosing  the 
good  and  rejecting  the  bad,  vindicating  them  and  vitalizing 
them  with  its  overruling  purpose,  can  the  facts  and  circum 
stances  of  the  physical  world  become  fit  to  assume  their  station 

in   the    immortal  temple   of   art You    cannot  bind    a 

human  mind  with  iron  fetters,  and  the  laws  which  control  fixed 

matter  cannot  be  applied  to  the  regulation  of  free  spirit 

To  what  end  is  this  royal  gift  of  imagination  bestowed  upon 
the  race?  Is  it  to  chronicle  small-beer,  which  speaks  suffi 
ciently  for  itself?  or  shall  it  be  applied  to  the  creation  of  an 
"Iliad,"  a  "Divine  Comedy,"  a  "Hamlet,"  a  "Paradise  Lost?" 
Is  it  better  to  show  the  seamstress  and  the  dry-goods  clerk  an 
elaborate  imitation  of  their  own  petty  existence  and  contracted 
ambition  ?  or  to  thrill  a  nation  with  a  grand  romance  and  elevate 
a  generation  with  a  sublime  poem?  If  we  have  any  Horace 
Walpoles,  any  Chesterfields,  any  Boswells  among  us,  let  them 
appeal  to  us  as  students  of  manners  and  biography  and  they 
shall  receive  their  due  welcome  and  recognition;  but  why 
should  they  assume  the  tones  and  the  titles  which  have 
been  made  reverend  by  Shakespeare,  Fielding  and  Balzac?  A 
work  of  art  should  partake  of  realism  only  as  to  its  substance; 

in  its  design  it  should  be  not  realistic,  but  ideal The 

idealists  should  draw  their  materials  from  the  accumulations  of 
science,  and  the  realists  should  forbear  the  attempt  to  carry 
physical  law  into  metaphysical  regions.  The  value  of  fiction 
lies  in  the  fact  that  it  can  give  us  what  actual  existence  cannot; 
that  it  can  resume  in  a  chapter  the  conclusions  of  a  lifetime; 
that  it  can  omit  the  trivial,  the  vague,  the  redundant,  and  select 
the  significant,  the  forcible  and  the  characteristic;  that  it  can 
satisfy  expectation,  expose  error  and  vindicate  human  nature. 
Life,  as  we  experience  it,  is  too  vast,  its  relations  are  too  com 
plicated,  its  orbit  too  comprehensive,  ever  to  give  us  the 
impression  of  individual  completeness  and  justice;  but  the 
intuition  of  these  things,  though  denied  to  sense,  is  granted  to 


Later  Movements  in  American  Fiction.     449 

faith,  and  we  are  authorized  to  embody  that  interior  conviction 
in  romance.  Everything  is  free  to  the  imagination,  provided 
only — as  a  great  imaginative  writer  has  said — it  do  not 
"swerve  aside  from  the  truth  of  the  human  heart."  And 
stories  of  imagination  are  truer  than  transcripts  of  fact, 
because  they  include  or  postulate  these,  and  give  a  picture  not 
only  of  the  earth  beneath  our  feet,  but  of  the  sky  above  us,  of 
the  hope  and  freshness  of  the  morning,  of  the  mystery  and 
magic  of  the  night.  They  draw  the  complete  circle,  instead  of 
mistrustfully  confining  themselves  to  the  lower  arc. 

Moral  struggle  and  spiritual  aspiration,  as  por 
trayed  by  the  majority  of  later  American  novelists, 
have  for  the  most  part  been  shown  in  limited 
fields,  in  separated  or  imperfect  types.  Not  often 
does  a  romancer  or  story-maker  essay  the  largest 
manner  or  the  highest  reach  of  thought.  But  in 
their  seeming  narrowness  these  lesser  novelists 
but  follow  life,  wherein  the  petty  struggle  and  the 
common  home  are  environed  by  all  the  broadening 
spheres  of  the  universe.  The  highest  thought 
may  be  born  of  what  seems  the  meanest  brain. 
The  writer,  too,  may  find  a  universal  lesson  in  the 
narrow  fact.  Not  yet,  aside  from  the  works  of 
Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  have  the  prob-  Edward  Everett 
lems  of  life  been  broadly  spread  upon  Hale> b-  l822- 
the  pages  of  our  fiction.  But  a  writer  so  stu 
diously  and  narrowly  realistic  as  Edward  Everett 
Hale  finds  no  clod  too  mean  on  which  to  stand 
while  his  eager  eyes  turn  with  the  upward  look. 
His  sketch  of  "  A  Man  without  a  Country"  is  a 
word-token  of  all  that  humanity  has  ever  con 
nected  with  the  idea  of  patriotism  ;  and  his  simple 

and  almost  rollicking  novelette  "  Ten  Times  One 
29 


450  American  Literature. 

is  Ten "  outlines  no  smaller  scheme  than  the  re 
generation  of  a  world  by  means  wholly  practical. 
It  is  no  wonder  that  the  lessons  of  Hale's  "  Ten 
Times  One  is  Ten"  and  "  In  His  Name/'  with 
their  optimism  and  cheery  helpfulness,  have  been 
caught  up  here  and  there  by  many  a  "  Harry 
Wadsworth  Club,"  ''  Look-up  Legion,"  or  "  King's 
Daughters  "  society.  This  is  proper  Americanism 
in  the  closing  years  of  the  century — the  father's 
gift  and  the  son's  duty  : 

"  To  look  up  and  not  down, 
To  look  forward  and  not  back, 
To  look  out  and  not  in, — and 
To  lend  a  hand.'5 

When  such  thoughts  are  embodied  in  books  the 
thoughts,  at  least,  cannot  die.  The  life  of  books 
and  authors  is  of  minor  importance. 

Some  of  the  writers  whom  I  have  named  may 
do  better  work  than  they  have  hitherto  done,  and 
others  may  do  worse  ;  the  field  of  fiction  will  be 
occupied  by  new  figures ;  literary  fashions  will 
change  ;  art  will  ever  be  followed,  and  will  be 
brought  to  higher  developments ;  but  in  novels 
as  in  life  the  coming  world  of  readers  will  ask  not 
only  whence  but  whither,  not  only  how  but  why. 
Whether  or  not  the  "  great  American  novel " 
will  ever  be  written  is  an  unimportant  question. 
But  if  it  be,  it  will  spring  from  the  character  which 
has  made  the  nation  in  the  past,  and  which  must 
be  its  future  reliance. 


INDEX   TO  VOL.   II. 


Abbey,  Henry,  245 
Abbott,  Jacob,  407-9 
Abbott,  J.  S.  C.,  366,  400 
Adams,  Sarah  Flower,  235 
Agassiz,  Louis,  198 
Alcott,  Louisa  M.,  44*7,  418 
Aldrich,    T.    B.,    265-8,    269;    an 
American    Herrick,     266-7  !    re- 
memberable  poems,  267-8 
Allen,  Mrs.  E.  A.,  223 
Allen,  Paul,  325 
Allston,  Washington,  28,  241 
America,  art  starvation  in,  283-4 
American      fiction,      see      Fiction, 

American 
American  literature,  see  Literature, 

American 

American  novelists,  lesser,  see  Nov 
elists,  lesser  American 
American      poetry,      see      Poetry, 

American 

American  soil,  poetry  of  the,  227 
American  song,  the  future,  281 
American  verse,   see  Verse,  Ameri 


can 


B 


Bacon,  Delia,  373 
Bancroft,  George,  173,  305 
Barlow,  Joel,  12,  13,  23,  35 
Bartol,  C.  A.,  165,  note 
"Bay  Psalm-Book,"  The,  3-4,  6, 172 
Beers,  II.  A.,  221 

Bird,  Robert  Montgomery,  17,  394-7 
Boker,  George  Henry,  17,  249-50 
Bowring,  Sir  John,  235 
Bradstreet,  Anne,  4-5,  7,  8,  9,  35 
Brainard,  J.  G.  C.,  31-3 
Bridge,  Horatio,  369,  note 
Briggs,  Charles  F.,  250 
Brooks,  Maria,  34 
Brown,    Charles    Brockden,   286-9, 
291,  442,  443 


Brownell,  H.  H.,  224      ^ 
Bryant,   William   Cullerrf  137,   138, 
144,  148,  149,  167,  173,  177,  194, 

2OO,  2IO,   22O,   235,  240,   245,   250, 

253,  323-9  I  writings  of,  35-49  J 
"  Thanatopsis,"  37-8  ;  poetic 
product,  38-41  ;  solemnity,  41-2  ; 
uniformity  of  work,  42-3  ;  prose, 
43—4  ;  a  poet  independent  of 
time-conditions,  46-7  ;  transla 
tion  of  Homer,  47-8  ;  career, 

48-9,  57 

Bucke,  R.  M.,  278,  note 
Burnett,   Frances  Hodgson,  428-9, 

434 


Cable,   G.  W.,  398,  400,  402,  421, 

426.  429-30,  443 
Carter,  Robert,  216,  note 
Cary,  Alice,  238 
Gary,  Phcebe,  238 
Channing,  William  Ellery,  173 
Channing,  William  Ellery,  Jr.,  233, 

236-7 

Chamberlain,  Mellen,  6,  note 
Child,  Lydia  Maria,  407 
Cilley,  Jonathan,  366,  573 
Coleman,  C.  W.,  Jr.,  428,  note 
"  Columbiad,"  The,  Barlow's,  12,  33 
"  Columbian  Muse,"  The,  23 
"  Confederate  Flag,"  The,  224 
"  Conquest      of      Canaan,"      The, 

Dwight's,    9,    17,    33 
/Cooke,    John     Esten,    401-3, ^  406^ 
443  ;  "  The  Virginia  Comedians," 
391,  401-3 

Cooke,  Rose  Terry,  417,  420 
Cooper,  James  Fenimore,  24,  80, 
no,  173,  283,  287,  292,  294,  295, 
296,  339.  358,  359.  36i,  395»  39°. 
401,  402,  406,  413,  442,  443  ; 
writings  of,  297-329;  "The 
American  Scott,"  298-9;  prodi 
gality  in  fiction,  299  ;  his  irregu- 


451 


452 


American  Literature. 


larity  of  work,  299-301  ;  minor 
writings,  301-2  ;  as  controversa- 
list,  302-4  ;  naval  history  and  bi 
ography,  304—5  ;  lesser  novels, 
305-8  ;  series  of  novels,  308-9  ; 
as  dogmatist,  309  ;  great  merits, 
310-12  ;  "  Leather-S  t  o  c  k  i  n  g 
Tales,"  312-14,  320,  note ;  his 
domain,  314  ;  sea-tales,  315  ;  our 
novelist  of  action,  on  land  or  sea, 
315-16  ;  "  The  Spy,"  317  ;  "  The 
Pilot,"  318  ;  "  Lionel  Lincoln," 
318,  320,  note;  "The  Red 
Rover,"  319;  "The  Bravo," 

319  ;    his    special   achievements, 

320  ;  conditions  of  his  time,  320- 
2  ;    Cooper,   Irving,   Bryant,   and 
Webster,   322-4  ;    Cooper  in  the 
early    days    of   American    litera 
ture,   324—7  ;  a   national   novelist 
of  international  fame,  327-8 

"Craddock,    Charles    Egbert,"    see 

Murfree,  Mary  N. 
Cranch,  C.  P.,  233,  236,  241 
Crawford,     Francis     Marion,     405, 

443,    445 

Cummins,  Maria  S.,  409 
Curtis,  G.  W.,  198,  293 
Cutler,  E.  J.,  224 

D 

Dana,  Richard  Henry,  28-9,  324 
Dawn  of  imagination,  the,  23-49 
"  Day   of   Doom,"    The,    Wiggles- 
worth's,  5-8 
Deming,     Philander,    419-20,    421, 

443 

Dial,  The,  233 
Dowden,  Edward,  333,  note 
Drake,   Joseph  Rodman,   24-7,   35, 

283 

Drama,  The,  in  America,  16-22 
Dunlap,  William,  18-19,  23 
Duyckinck,  E.  A.,  221 
Duyckinck,  G.  L.,  221 
Dwight,  J.  S.,  233,, 234-5 
Dwight,  Timothy,  9-11,  23 


Eastburn,  J.  W.,  324 
Edwards,  Jonathan,  6,  391 
Eggleston,   Edward,  422-3 
Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  8,  40,  41, 
42,  46,  50,  51,  54,  59,  60,  63,  70, 
89,  94,  102,  103,  no,   136,   173, 


194,  2OO,   2O2,   2O4,   2O8,  2IO,   219, 
220,   233,   235,   236,   237,   239,  240, 

245,   247,   275,   277,   278,   279,   282, 

341,  345,  346,  375,  377-S  ;  as 
poet,  137-71  ;  poetry  and  prose, 
T37~9 !  poetic  theme,  139-40; 
method  and  limitations,  140-2  ; 
spontaneity,  142  ;  "  The  Rho- 
dora,"  142-4  ;  a  poet  of  nature, 
144-5  ;  thought  and  expression, 
145-9  J  tne  test  °f  popularity, 
149-50  ;  Emerson  and  the  greater 
poets,  150-2 ,  evenness  of  his 
work,  152-6  ;  conciseness,  156-7  ; 
"  The  Snow-Storm, "  157-8  ; 
"  Hamatreya,"  158-60  ;  "  Brah 
ma,"  161-5  ;  general  estimate  of 
his  poetry,  165-71  ;  its  future, 
167-8  ;  success  as  far  as  success 
was  sought,  168-9  !  the  poetry  of 
an  optimist,  169-71 
English,  Thomas  Dunn,  223 
European  impact  upon  American 
literature,  240 


Fessenden,  Thomas  Green,  373 

Fiction,  American,  later  move 
ments  in,  413-50 

Fiction,  the  belated  beginning  of, 
282-96  ;  fiction  the  highest  prose, 
282-3  ;  fiction  and  poetry,  unity 
of,  283 

Fields,  J.  T.,  165,  note  ;  217 

Finch,  F.  M.,  223 

Foster,  S.  C.,  225-7;  "My  Old 
Kentucky  Home,"  226 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  36,  371 

Freneau,  Philip,  13-16;  "The 
House  of  Night,"  15-16,  23,  286 

Fuller,  Sarah  Margaret,  238 


Gilder,  R.  W.,  243-4 
Godfrey,  Thomas,  17 
Goethe,  J.  W.  von,  "  Wilhelm 

Meister,"    55 
Greene,  Albert  G.,  223 
"  Greenfield  Hill,"  Dwight's,  n 
Griswold,  R.  W.,  222 

H 

Hale,  Edward  Everett,  393,  449-50 
Halleck,    Fitz-Greene,    24,     26-28, 
35,  211,  note  ;  324 


Index  to  Vol.  II. 


453 


Hardy,  A.  S.,  440 

Harte,    Francis    Bret,   421,   423-5, 
426 

Hawthorne,  Julian,  341,  347,  note  ; 

368,  443,  445-9 

"""Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  54,  93,  101, 
102,  no,  121-3,  125,  136,  173, 
194,  282,  283,  287,  292,  296,  297, 
300,  306,  310,  311,  390,  400-1, 
402,  407,  413,  428,  436,  443,  447, 
449  ;  writings  of,  330-89  ;  liter 
ary  artists  of  the  beautiful,  330-1; 
Dante  and  Hawthorne,  331-2  ; 
"  Hand  and  Soul,"  332-3  ;  litera 
ture  as  art,  333-4  ;  Hawthorne  as 
artist,  334-5  ;  the  romancer  of 
the  human  heart,  335-6  ;  art  and 
ethics,  336—7  ;  moral  law  in  Eng 
lish  fiction,  337-9  ;  an  inevitable 
race-principle,  339-40  ;  his  foun 
dation,  340 ;  was  he  morbid  ? 
340-2  ;  the  extremes  in  his  uni 
verse,  342-4  ;  attitude  in  the 
sentimental  era,  341-5  ;  his  out 
look,  345-6 ;  philosophy  of  life, 
346-7  ;  a  realist  and  an  idealist, 
347-9  ;  "  Ethan  Brand,"  346-52; 
the  universe  of  morals,  351  ;  the 
stony  heart,  351  ;  "The  Three 
fold  Destiny,"  352-4:  "Lady 
Eleanore's  Mantle,"  354-5,  357- 
8  ;  his  background,  355-6  ; 
creator,  not  follower,  356-7  ;  his 
romances,  358-60,  375-84 ;  his 
humanity,  360-1  ;  his  youth  in  Sa 
lem,  361-3  ;  at  Bowdoin  College, 
363—6  ;  as  recluse,  366—9  ;  "  Fan- 
shawe,"  360,  369-70  ;  "  Twice- 
Told  Tales,"  359,  370-1  ;  juve 
nile  stories,  371-2  ;  quiet  charm, 
372-3  J  "  The  Snow-Image,  and 
Other  Twice-Told  Tales,"  373-5; 
"Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse," 
359,  373-5;  "The  Scarlet  Letter," 
359,  375-7  5  "  The  House  of  the 
Seven  Gables,"  359,  375,  376-7  ; 
"  The  Blithedale  Romance,"  359, 
375,377;  "The  Marble  Faun," 
358,  377-83,  387;  "Life  of 
Pierce,"  379,  note;  art  and  en 
vironment,  380-1  ;  "  The  Dolli- 
ver  Romance,"  etc.,  360,  383-4  ; 
note-books,  384-5  ;  "  Our  Old 
Home,"  360,  384  ;  his  faults, 
385-6  ;  place  in  literature,  386-9 

Hawthorne,  Sophia,  347,  348,  382 


Hayne,  Paul  H.,  229-231,  232,  398 
Hedge,  F.  H,,  165,  note 
Henry,  Patrick,  173 
"  H.  H.,"  see  Jackson,  Helen 
Higginson,  T.  W.,  368,  note  ;  418- 

19 

Holland,  J.  G.,  227-8 

Holmes,  Abiel,  17 

Holmes,  Oliver  Wendell,  71,  138, 
165,  172,  235,  240,  246  ;  poems 
of,  204-18  ;  wholesome  American 
conservatism,  207  ;  his  essays 
and  novels,  208-9  ;  personality  of 
his  poems,  209-10  ;  as  lyrist,  210- 
12;  occasional  verse,  212; 
"  Rhymes  of  an  Hour,"  212-13  » 
his  masterpieces,  213-17  ;  "  The 
Last  Leaf,"  210,  213,  214-15  ; 
his  career,  217-18 

Hooper,  Ellen  Sturgis,  233,  235 

Hopkinson,  Joseph,  26 

Howard,  Blanche  Willis,  445 

Howe,  Julia  Ward,  223 

Howells,  W.  D.,  434,  436-8 


Irving,  Washington,  23,  36,  250, 
283,  302,  305,  311,  314,  323,  324, 
339,.  356,  358,  361,  402,  443  ; 
stories  of,  289-92  ;  the  true  be 
ginner  of  American  fiction,  289- 
90  ;  as  novelist,  290-1  ;  his  fields 
and  triumph,  291-2 

Irving,  William,  292 


Jackson,  Helen  ("  H.  H."),  238-9 
James,    Henry,     419,    432-6,    437, 

440 

Jefferson,  Thomas,  402 
Jewett,  Sarah  O.,  416-17,  420,  434 
Judd,    Sylvester,    392-4,  406,  443  ; 

"  Margaret,"  391,  392-4 


Kennedy,  J.  P.,  306,  397-8,  403 
Key,  F.  S.,  26 
Kinney,  Coates,  223 


Landor,  Walter  Savage,  155,  167-8 
Lanier,  Sidney,  231-2,  242,  398 


454 


American  Literature. 


Larcom,  Lucy,  238 

Lathrop,  G.  P.,  379,  note 

Lazarus,   Emma,  240 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  173,  200-1,  408 

Livingston,  Edward,  324 

Livingston,  William,  12,  23 

Literature,  American,  idea  of  free 
dom  in,  172-3 

•--- Longfellow,  Henry  Wadsworth,  8, 
17,  40,  41,  42,  45,  101,  125,  128, 
137,  138,  140-1,  148,  149,  158, 
167,  175,  176,  183,  187,  188,  194, 

198,   200,   206,   210,   219,   220,   223, 

23°.  235,  240,  245,  248,  249,  266, 
275,  283,  331,  342  ;  writings  of, 
50-96  ;  the  questioned  leader  of 
American  song,  52  ;  transient 
work,  52-3  ;  "  Kavanagh,  a 
Tale,"  53-4  ;  "  Hyperion,  a  Ro 
mance,"  54-6;  early  poems,  57- 
8  ;  causes  of  popularity,  58-61  ; 
as  lyrist,  61-2  ;  the  poet's  soul 
and  the  poet's  hand,  62-3  ;  poetry 
and  the  religious  sentiment,  63-5; 
successive  volumes  of  minor 
poems,  65-7  ;  sonnets,  67-9  ; 
"  My  Books,"  68  ;  "  Victor  and 
Vanquished,"  68  ;"  The  Spanish 
Student,"  69-70  ;  "  Evangeline," 
69,  70-8,  89  ;  hexameters,  73-8  ; 
"  The  Courtship  of  Miles  Stand- 
ish,"  74,  78-9;  "Hiawatha," 
69,  79-87,  89  ;  trochaics,  81-7  ; 
spontaneous  beauty,  85  ;  repeti 
tions  and  parallelisms,  85-6  ; 
"  Christus  "  (comprising  "  The 
Divine  Tragedy,"  "  The  Golden 
Legend,"  and  "  The  New  Eng 
land  Tragedies  "),  70,.  79,  87-9  ; 
"  Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn,"  89, 
90-1  ;  translation  of  Dante,  91- 
2  ;  "  Michael  Angelo,"  92  ;  the 
man  and  the  poet,  93—5  ;  limita 
tions,  94  ;  "  Morituri  Salutamus," 
95-6 

Lounsbury,  T.  R.,  304 

Lowell,  James  Russell,  50,  89,  138, 
158,  172,  205,  206,  207,  210,  213, 
242,  250,  261,  283,  302,  note,  410  ; 
poems  of,  186-204  ;  early  poems, 
187-9;  "A  Fable  for  Critics," 
189,  195,  196  ;  manly  sincerity, 
189-90  ;  humanity,  190-2  ;  lavish- 
ness,  192—3  ;  philosophic  thought, 
193  ;  verbosity,  194  ;  poems  of  free 
dom,  nature,  and  human  nature, 


195  ;  varied  demands  of  Ameri 
can  life,  195-6  ;  "  The  Vision  of 
Sir  Launfal,"  193,  195,  196  ; 
"  The  Biglow  Papers,"  184,  195, 
196-7,  198-200  ;  delineation  of 
Yankee  character,  197  ;  his  best 
lyrics,  197-8  ;  man  and  artist, 
198-9  ;  secret  of  his  successes  and 
failures,  199-200  ;  a  poet  of  the 
time,  200 ;  the  American  song, 
201-3;  "The  Cathedral,"  198, 
203 


M 


Marvell,  Andrew,  2 

Mather,  Cotton,  6 

Mayo,  W.  S.,  395,  404-5 

McClurg,  James,  13 

"  McFingal,"    Trumbull's,     n-12, 

13 

Melville,  Herman,  403-4 

Miller,   Cincinnatus   Hiner   ("  Joa- 

quin  "),  232-3 
Milton,  John,  I 
Morris,  G.  P.,  223 
Motley,    John   Lothrop,    173,    203, 

38i 

Murdock,  Frank,  17 
Murfree,  Mary  N.  ("  Charles  Egbert 

Craddock"),  400,  421,  426,  443 


N 


Novelists,  lesser  American,  390-412 
Novels  of  "feeling,"  284-5 

O 

O'Brien,  Fitz-James,  443 
Osgood,  Mrs.  F.  S.,  220 
Otis,  James,  173 


Packard,  Alpheus  S.,  364 

Page,  William,  250 

Paine,  R.  T.,  Jr.,  26 

Parkman,  Francis,  80,  173 

Parsons,  T.  W.,  242-3 

Paulding,  James  Kirke,  292-5,  395, 

397 
Payne,  John  Howard,  17,  19-22, 

250 
Percival,  James  Gates,  29-31,  302, 

324 


Index  to  Vol.  II. 


455 


Peyton,  J.  Lewis,  426,  note 
Phelps,    Elizabeth   Stuart,    417-18, 

419,  421 

Piatt,  Mrs.  S.  M.  B.,  240 
Pierce,  Franklin,  379,  and  note 
Pinkney,  Edward  Coate,  427,  note 
Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  8,  33,  40,  5°,  5L 

52,    69,    70,    138,   148,   149,   150, 

190,  200,  210,,  211,  215-6,  221, 
222,  230,  240,  245,  246,  250, 

260,  269,  275,  283,  287,  292,  31  r, 
341,  342,  356,  358,  361,  395,  398> 
402,  403,  413,.  427,  note,  442, 
443,  447  '•>  writings  of,  97-136  ; 
personality,  98-100  ;  library 
field,  100-2  ;  measure  of  success, 
102-3  ;  a  poet  of  beauty,  103-7  ; 
"  To  Helen,"  103-4,  105,  107  ; 
"  To  One  in  Paradise."  104-5, 

107  ;     "  Annabel     Lee,"     195-7, 
191  ;  the  eternity  of  the  individual 
soul,   107  ;  a  poet  of  weird  woe, 

108  ;  the  singer  and  his  hearers, 
108-10 ;    originality,     no;     fail 
ures,  HO-I2  ;  "  The  Bells,"  109, 
112-15  ;  "  The  Raven,"  108,  109, 
113-14,  126  ;  "  Politian,"  104-16, 
prose,   116-136  ;    "  Ligeia,"  107, 
117-18  ;  definiteness  of  tales,  118- 
19  ;  "  The  Fall  of  the  House  of 
Usher,"    107,    119-20 ;    divisions 
of  tales,  120-1  ;  "  Arthur  Gordon 
Pym,"      121  ;      "  Eureka,"    101, 
121,   128  ;  Poe   and    Hawthorne, 
1 2 1-3  ;   could   he    create    charac 
ters  ?    123-5  ;    mind    and    heart, 
125-6  ;    analytic    power,    126-7  ; 
clearness  of   speech,    127-8  ;    his 
product  the  best  he  could  offer, 
128-9;   prose   poems:   "Silence, 
a  Fable,"  130-4  ;    time  and  Poe, 
135-6 

Poetry,  American,  to-day,  244 
Poetry,   American,    tones   and   ten 
dencies  of,  219-81 
Poetry  and  fiction,  unity  of,  283 
Poetry  of  the  American  soil,  227 
Poetry  of  thought  and  culture,  233 
Poets  of  freedom  and  culture  :  Whit- 
tier,   Lowell,  and   Holmes,  172- 
218 
Preston,  Margaret  J.,  238 


Quincy,  Edmund,   199 


Read,  T.  B.,  223,  241 
Rhys,  Ernest,  278,  note 
Richardson,  Samuel,   "Sir  Charles 

Grandison,"  58 
Richter,  J.  P.  F.,  56 
Roe,  E.  P.,  441 
Rowson,  Susanna,  283,  285-6,  391 


Sanborn,  F.  B.,  165,  note 

Sands,  Robert  C.,  43,  324 

Saxe,  J.  G.,  228 

Sears,  E.  H.,  235 

Sedgwick,  Catharine  M.,_324,  406 

Sentimentality  in    American  verse, 

219-20 
Sigourney,   Mrs.   L.    H.,   220,   222, 

223 

Sill,  Edward  Rowland.  237-8 
Simms,  William  Gilmore,  398-401, 

402 

"  Simple  Tale,"  A,  295-6 
Spofford,  Harriet  Prescott,  443-4 
Stedman,  E.  C.,  206,  247,  250,  269  ; 

poems  of,   256-65  ;    a   lyrist  and 

idyllist,  258-9  ;  life  and  the  poet, 

260  ;    the    old    thought    in   new 

times,  260-5 
Stoddard,    R.    H.,    264,    269,    447, 

note  ;  poems  of,  250-6  ;  "  Hymn 

to  the  Beautiful,"  253-6 
Stone,  John  Augustus,  17 
Story,  W.  W.,  241-2 
Stowe,   Harriet  Beecher,   283,  410- 

12,  419  ;  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin," 

391,  409,  410-1^441,  442 


"  Talisman,"  The,  43~44,  296 
Taylor,    Bayard,    210,    228,    246-8, 

250,  269 

Tenney,  Tabitha,  283,  285-6,  391 
Thaxter,  Celia,  238 
Thomas,  Edith  M.,  240 
Thoreau,    Henry  David,   233,   235, 

237,  345 

Timrod,  Henry,  229,  231,  232 
Tones  and  tendencies  of  American 

verse,  219-81 
Transcendentalism,  233,   235,    236, 

237 
Trowbridge,  J.  T.,  228 


45^ 


American  Literature. 


Trumbull,  John,  11-12,  13,  23 
Tyler,  Royall,  18,  19 


U 


Unitarianism,  235 
United     States     Literary     Gazette, 
The,  57,  58 


Verplanck,  Gulian  C.,  43,  44 

Verse,  American,  tones  and  ten 
dencies  of,  219-81 

Verse-making,  early,  in  America, 
1-22 

Very,  Jones,  233-4 

W 

Wallace,  Lewis,  405  ;  "Ben-Hur," 

441-2 

Ward,  William  Hayes,  246,  note 
Ware,  William,  405-6 
Warner,  Susan,  409 
Warren,  Caroline  Matilda,  286 
Washington,  George,  10,  41,  402 
Webster,  Daniel,  127,  173,  178,323 
Wheatley,  Phillis,  8-9 
Whitman,  Walt,  63,  89,  no,    194, 

200,  240   242  ;  writings  of,  268- 


8 1  ;  prose,  269-71  ;  "  Leaves  of 
Grass,"  271-80;  its  limitations, 
275-6  ;  its  verse-form,  276-7  ; 
what  it  is  not,  277-9  !  what  it  is, 
279-80  ;  the  future  American 
song,  281 

Whittier,  John  Greenleaf,  40,  42, 
51,  89,  137,  138,  158,  172,  188, 
194,  196,  198,  200,  203,  204,  223, 
228,  240,  275,  368  ;  prose  works, 
177,  note  ;  poetical  works,  173- 
87  ;  character  of  the  man,  176-7  ; 
his  country-heart,  177-8  ;  transi 
ent  *  and  permanent  writings, 
178-9 ;  lyrical  power,  179-81  ; 
nature  and  exercise  of  his  powers, 
181-2  ;  "  Snow-Bound, "  175, 177, 

Wigglesworth,  Michael,  5-8 
Wilde,  Richard  Henry,  33-4,  35 
Wilkms,  Mary  E.,  419 
Willard,  Samuel,  391 
Willis,  N.  P.  200,  220-1,  223 
Willson,  Forceythe,  224-5 
Winthrop,  Theodore,  415-16,  443 
Woman  in  American  literature,  240 
Woodworth,  Samuel,  223 
Woolson,      Constance      Fenimore, 

421-2,  426 
Wordsworth,  William,  35-6 


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